Final week, the Supreme Court docket issued its long-awaited opinion in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. This opinion scaled again the (largely judicially imposed) necessities for Environmental Influence Statements beneath the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA), and will dramatically cut back allowing burdens on wanted infrastructure.
Additionally final week, the Case Western Reserve Regulation Evaluate posted the papers from its “Allowing the Future” symposium problem. These papers study the burden of allowing necessities on environmentally fascinating growth. Power infrastructure is a serious focus of the symposium, as it’s of the bigger debate over allowing, however some papers study the impact on different points, reminiscent of federal land administration and concrete revitalization.
The amount consists of:
All the papers can be found on-line of their printed kind.
My very own contribution, past offering an introduction and overview, walks by way of the allowing gauntlet confronted by the Lake Erie Wind Venture, a gauntlet that finally killed the mission. I consider it’s a helpful case examine of how even well-intentioned allowing necessities and regulatory processes could make it very tough for various vitality sources to be developed and deployed (and might make it all-too-easy for a small set of decided opponents to kill a probably helpful mission).
The papers had been ready for a workshop co-sponsored by the Coleman P. Burke Heart for Environmental Regulation (the place I’ve spend the previous six years because the founding Director) and the Property and Atmosphere Analysis Heart (the place I’m a Senior Fellow).
