LPDD Newsletter: July 2022
New LPDD Model Laws
Since the last newsletter update, the LPDD team has released a State Green Leases Model Law. Green leases outline the way in which a building will be occupied, managed, and operated to achieve energy efficiency and overcome the split incentives that occur between tenants and owners. In a green lease, a tenant shares the cost and benefits of sustainability upgrades and practices with the building owner, resulting in financial and sustainability gains for both parties.
Despite the benefits of green leasing, adoption of green leases is more often observable in the commercial sector, and less so in multi-family residences. Due to the short-term nature of residential leases, these lease agreements generally do not include cost recovery clauses allowing amortization.
This model legislation recognizes the importance of greening multi-family residential spaces and attempts to encourage the adoption of green leases in this market by 1) encouraging/requiring owners to implement efficiency upgrades when units are vacant between residents and 2) affecting owner and tenant behavior towards energy conservation through education, standard setting, and transparency.
On West Virginia v. EPA
Last week, LPDD Co-Founders Michael Gerrard and John Dernbach both published articles in major newspapers interpreting and contextualizing SCOTUS's recent Decision in West Virginia v. EPA.
In the Los Angeles Times, Michael Gerrard writes that the decisionis "a blow to the fight against climate change, but ... not a total knockout." Many regulatory pathways remain open to tackling emissions from the transportation sector, buildings, and even the coal-fired power plants that were at the center of the recent SCOTUS decision. While EPA itself retains many regulatory options for addressing these sources, Gerrard calls our attention to the growing body of state and local climate regulation that is filling the federal void, and points readers to modelclimatelaws.org for adoptable models addressing myriad sectors and sources of emissions.
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, John Dernbach and Steve Herzenberg write that the Court's decision means we must redouble our efforts on climate change. They said: "We must continue fighting for climate action -- in court, in Congress, in state legislatures, and before local governments, and at the ballot box." Dernbach and Herzenberg note that EPA and other federal agencies retain valuable regulatory tools on climate, and that the full menu of state and local legislative approaches remains on the table.
New External Resources
modelclimatelaws.org is being continually updated with new, external legal resources. Below is a selection of recently added resources:
Rhode Island's 100% Renewable Target by 2033: In June, Rhode Island enacted H7277, requiring 100% of the state’s electricity demand be met with renewable energy by 2033, the earliest such target in the country. The target is established through revisions to the state’s existing Renewable Energy Standard. In 2024, the Public Service Commission must assess the impact of allowing voluntary renewable energy purchases to be counted toward meeting intermediate goals through 2033, an important consideration for determining the additionality of those purchases to existing targets.
Delaware's Requirement for Curbside Charging Procedures in Municipalities: In June, Delaware enacted a law that requires municipalities with a population over 30,000 to develop a procedure for residents to install an electric vehicle charging station on real property zoned for residential use that abuts a residential street. This legislation aims to fill an important void that exists for apartment-dwellers and other residents who don't have the capacity to install chargers in their garages.
FERC Proposed Rules to Speed Up Energy Project Interconnections: In June, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR) outlining a plan to speed up and streamline what’s become an expensive and substantially backlogged process for connecting new solar, wind and battery projects to the transmission grid. Among other provisions, proposed rules include: allowing larger interconnection studies encompassing numerous proposed facilities, rather than separate studies for each individual facility; imposing deadlines and establishing penalties if transmission providers fail to complete interconnection studies on time; allowing multiple resources behind a single point of interconnection to share a single interconnection request; and requiring transmission providers to consider alternative transmission solutions if requested to do so. From the June 16, 2022 release of this NOPR, public comments will be due in 100 days.
California Single-Use Plastics Ban: In June, California adopted a law requiring all plastic packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. Among its obligations, the law requires by 2032 that plastic producers reduce the amount of plastic in packaging by 25 percent (by, for example, reducing package sizing, switching to a different material, or making the products reusable), and that California raise its recycling rate for all plastic products to 65%. The law shifts the costs of recycling infrastructure, recycling plants, and collection and sorting facilities from taxpayers to packaging manufacturers. Over the next ten years, plastics manufacturers must pay $5 billion into a fund to mitigate the effects of plastic pollution on the environment and human health, primarily in low-income communities.
New York's Utility Thermal Energy Network and Jobs Act: In June, New York enacted a law opening the door for utilities to build and own networks that distribute thermal energy, under the watch of the state Public Service Commission. The legislation directs the Public Service Commission to develop a regulatory structure for such networks. It requires the state’s seven largest utilities to pilot at least one and as many as five thermal energy networks as a test in the short term.
Tesla Aggregates into PG&E's Emergency Demand Response Program: In June, Tesla and Pacific Gas & Electric launched a program to aggregate the storage in ratepayers’ Tesla Powerwalls to provide emergency power to California’s grid when intense heat drives up demand on the system. Participating residential and other distributed battery owners will be paid $2 per kWh for exporting power at high demand periods from 4 PM to 9 PM between May 1 and October 31. This unique relationship between a utility and EV provider is founded on California's Emergency Load Reduction Program, which was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission last December to shore up the grid during late summer afternoons and early evenings, and is an example of how forward-thinking utilities can design programs that leverage EVs as a grid resource.
New Hampshire's Renewable Natural Gas Legislation: In June, New Hampshire approved a bill allowing utilities to procure up to 5% of gas supplies from renewable natural gas (RNG) and make upgrades to their distribution infrastructure to lower emissions. The law encourages but does not require the procurement of renewable natural gas and investment in RNG infrastructureby gas utilities, "provided that the Public Utilities Commission finds utility proposals to be in the public interest."
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This update highlights and summarizes recent additions to the Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization (LPDD) website, which houses actual and model laws addressing the causes of climate change in the United States.
The Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Model Law Project (LPDD-MLP) is a pro bono effort to draft model laws for use by legislators at the federal, state and local levels to support their efforts to achieve deep reductions in fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions. The project is based on recommendations from the groundbreaking book Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States (Michael Gerrard and John C. Dernbach, eds., 2019). The work is supported by Columbia University's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Widener University Commonwealth Law School’s Environmental Law and Sustainability Center. Dozens of law firms and individual lawyers are contributing to this pro-bono effort as drafters, peer reviewers or in reaching out to policymakers.
Our website, modelclimatelaws.org, contains over 50 model laws that are a starting place for discussion and collaboration among elected officials, non-profit groups, and the private sector for enabling the U.S. to address climate change by reducing U.S. GHG emissions to zero by 2050 or earlier. The site includes several Top 10 lists for some of the key categories, like electric vehicles, PUC’s, buildings and other topics as a short-hand introduction. In addition, the site references hundreds of other actions that states and other governmental bodies have taken to move towards decarbonization more rapidly. By providing policymakers the tools to achieve deep decarbonization, the Project will help achieve a restructuring of the energy economy, thus alleviating the worst effects of climate change, which are disproportionately suffered by marginalized communities, while providing such positive benefits as economic security, social equity, and environmental justice (EJ).
Please contact us to talk about getting involved in drafting and peer reviewing legislation, to provide suggestions and feedback on the drafts and to talk about how we can help you support your climate change efforts.