LPDD November Newsletter

New LPDD Model Laws

Last month, the LPDD team published a model state law addressing Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) for the collection and recycling of packaging of all types of consumer products. Numerous states have developed EPR bills of various types, which our drafting team analyzed and combined the best parts of each, while allowing room for states to modify the legislation where appropriate. States can modify the draft, for example, to adjust which agency will administer and enforce the act, the length and difficulty of the phasing-in period for producers, and the structure and nature of penalties for failure to comply.

The ultimate responsibilities imposed by the model legislation assign most of the heavy lifting to the producer or industry, while retaining meaningful roles for consumers and governments. This bill is also readily extended into extending producer responsibility to the product itself, not just the packaging and paper products.

The accompanying memorandum to this model law includes a compendium of existing state and federal laws and regulations currently addressing the issue and compares their varying approaches.

New External Resources

modelclimatelaws.org is being continually updated with new, external legal resources. Below is a selection of recently added resources:

• North Carolina's Proposed Advanced Clean Trucks Program: In October, North Carolina's governor signed an Executive Order tasking the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality to propose an Advanced Clean Trucks Program to the Environmental Management Commission by next May. The commission then would have to sign off on any proposal to make it enforceable. The requested rule would require van, bus and commercial truck manufacturers to sell more zero-emission vehicles in the state over time, increasing from 10-13% in 2026 to 40-75% in 2035, depending on vehicle sizes. North Carolina would join six other states with similar programs, following California's example.
• 2022 Chicago Energy Transformation Code: This autumn, the Chicago City Councilpassed the 2022 Chicago Energy Transformation Code, which requires that new buildings are constructed in alignment with stronger energy efficiency and electrification standards to advance decarbonization. Chicago thereby becomes one of the first major U.S. cities to adopt and exceed the 2021 edition of the International Energy Conservation Code. Changes in this revision to the code include requirements related to energy-efficient lighting; designing certain commercial building roofs to support future solar panel installations; constructing residential buildings with infrastructure that enablesa future switch to electric-powered appliances; and incentives for smart HVAC and water appliances that integrate with the power grid to reduce demand during peak use.
• California Ban on Parking Requirements Near Transit: This autumn, California passed a law barring local governments from imposing parking requirements at housing, retail and other commercial developments within a half-mile of major public transit stops. This novel approach to reforming transportation demand may be a boon to density and public transportation while helping moderate housing prices. Cities can still impose parking requirements for hotel developments, and developers can, of course, build parking spaces for any type of project if they choose to.
• **Washington State Heat Pump Requirement In New Construction:**Per a November ruling from the Washington State Building Code Council, the state will require electric heat pumps in all newly built homes beginning in July 2023. The revised building codes will allow new homes to install backup gas systems, which would fire up when temperatures reach lows in winter.
• New York's Ballot Measure on Climate Mitigation: In the midterm election, New York voters overwhelmingly approved the Clean Water, Clean Energy, Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, or Proposition 1. Among other provisions, the Act includes up to $1.5B for climate change mitigation measures, including $500 million to help school districts ensure their school buses are all electric by 2035, which the state mandated earlier this year. There will also be funds to transform school buildings and state-owned properties to energy efficient facilities, including updating heating and cooling systems. Off-shore wind farms are being allocated $500 million.
• Boulder's Climate Tax: Also on the midterm ballot, voters in Boulder, Colorado, approved a new Climate Tax on electric and natural gas bills to fund climate mitigation and resilience efforts. The new tax replaces and expands an expiring tax, and is intended to fund municipal efforts towards energy efficiency upgrades, microgrids and storage, building electrification, and transportation electrification, among other resilience efforts.
• Denver's Waste No More Ballot Measure: Also via ballot measure, Denver voters endorsed new rules mandating that large apartment buildings, restaurants and a broad range of other commercial businesses be required to recycle or compost as much waste as possible. Waste No More Denver covers all apartment and condo buildings over eight units, businesses that create food waste like restaurants, hospitals, sports venues and food trucks, and requires construction and demolition projects to salvage and recycle materials ranging from cardboard to scrap metal.
• Hawaii's Time of Use Rates Requirements: In October, Hawaii became the first state to generally approve time of use rates for utilities across its territory. The rate structure will encourage people to shift consumption away from the most expensive and dirty hours and into the cheaper, cleaner hours on the state’s increasingly solar-dominated grid. Under the new scheme, electricity in the evening peak hours costs three times more than it does in the sunny hours of booming solar production.

Past Events

Overview of ABA SEER Pro Bono Opportunities: October 27, 2022

On October 27th, members of the LPDD team joined the ABA Section of Environment, Energy, and Resources to discuss pro bono work opportunities. Our team discussed drafting or peer reviewing decarbonization-related model legislation for the Legal Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Project. We were joined by the Thriving Earth Exchange, who discussed opportunities providing legal advice or conducting research for community-based projects. You can watch a recording of the event here.

Get Involved!

Not sure how to support our work? Check out our Get Involved page to see the many avenues by which lawyers can join us, and get in contact!

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.