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In choosing the top environmental laws, I wanted to focus on those with the largest impacts on the environment, not just those that are most important to environmental lawyers or best known. I included all laws passed in the U.S., not just federal regulatory laws, and some of my selections may not be what you expected.
However, since major US environmental laws are enacted to protect the air, water, and land separately (i.e. the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act), as a result, EPA programs are often implemented narrowly, not holistically.
To supercharge the transition to clean school buses, Congress amended and reinvigorated the Clean School Bus Program with a $5 billion dollars over 5 years investment as part of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (also known as the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law). Why not 100 percent? The figure below shows the results.
The sector—including personal transportation like passenger cars, as well as air, marine, and surface goods and people movement—is the largest source of greenhouse gasses in the U.S.: But, as our panelist Beth Osborne has argued , greenhouse-gas reductions will also depend on reducing the amount of driving we do in general.
To explore a small piece of what is at stake, let’s take a quick look at some of the rules currently under review at the EPA: Air emission reporting requirements If finalized and implemented, this rule will improve the way airpollution emissions are estimated and collected by the EPA.
The California Legislature recently enacted, and Governor Gavin Newsom last week signed into law, two major housing reform measures. SB 9 and SB 10 represent California’s most transformative new housing laws in decades, and are a belated but welcome legislative response to the state’s longstanding housing crisis.
The scoping process has been key to California’s success in cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The State of New York most recently adopted the scoping process as part of an aggressive new scheme to cut greenhouse gas emissions. b) The range of projected airpollution reductions that result from the measure. (c)
But while greenhouse gas emissions may be reduced, a delivery fulfilled by a diesel-burning truck may lead to increases in emissions of smog-forming nitrogen oxides and lung-damaging particulate matter. While the latter part of this conclusion is obvious, the former part isn’t as much.
UCLA Professor of Law William Boyd. William Boyd is Professor of Law and Michael J. Klein Chair in Law at UCLA Law, with a joint appointment as Professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability ; Alex Wang is Professor of Law at UCLA Law. UCLA Professor of Law Alex Wang.
I did a Westlaw search for all cases that used the terms “global climate change,” “global warming,” “greenhouse effect,” or “greenhouse gas.” Apart from a couple of earlier cases using the terms in irrelevant contexts — such as discussing actual greenhouses — the first reported opinions were issued in 1990.
The same is true in environmental law. Was it a fundamental paradigm shift, re-centering the law on new values? With all this in mind, here are the cases that I see as making up the canon and anti-canons of environmental law. The Court then held that greenhouse gases are covered by the Clean Air Act as a type of airpollutant.
With the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) on Tuesday Aug 16, the most significant climate legislation in US federal history (so far) became law. Despite the odd name (and greatly overused TLA ), the IRA contains a huge number of elements, totalling roughly $350 billion of investment, in climate solutions over the next ten years.
In 2022, the amount of the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions nationwide was over one billion tons , making Japan the 5 th largest GHG emitter in the world. In February 2023, the Tokyo District Court found that the Notice of Finalization, which had been issued through a simplified permitting procedure, was lawful.
Switching from fossil fuels like gasoline to increasingly clean electricity sources is vital for hitting climate and airpollution goals. However the long term drop in per person gasoline use is likely due to fuel economy and greenhouse gas standards that have made gasoline vehicles more efficient over the prior decades.
By using recycled instead of newly mined materials, reduction of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions is approximately 64%. EV battery recycling policy in the United States to-date consists of investment in recycling research, development, and demonstration, such as in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
On June 13, 2022, Chile published its Climate Change Framework Law (“the Climate Act”). The country meets seven of the nine criteria, including an extensive low-lying coastline, areas prone to natural disasters, areas susceptible to drought and desertification, and urban areas with high airpollution. Conclusions.
If passed, this new law would finally put an end to the millions of tonnes of coal – the world’s dirtiest and deadliest fossil fuel – that are shipped overseas from Canada’ west coast every year. Not only does burning coal contribute massively to rising greenhouse gas emissions, it also endangers people’s health.
Although these programs differ in their details, they all attempt to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions cost-effectively by creating a market for permissions to emit—called “allowances”—subject to an overall cap on the amount of aggregate emissions allowed.
et al. ) This blog post explores how the citizens in Kobe, a city in west Japan, attempted to stop the construction and operation of new coal-fired power plants through administrative and civil law actions. Those rights are established through case law and frequently invoked in environmental pollution cases. Kobe Steel Ltd.,
To address these dual needs, UC Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) and the UCLA Law Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment are today releasing the new report Fueling & Financing: Addressing the Urgent Challenges Facing Electric Heavy-Duty Vehicle Deployment.
Tailpipes from our cars, trucks and buses are also a major source of toxic local airpollution that disproportionately harms overburdened and underserved communities. An average global temperature change greater than 1.5 Reducing emissions from our vehicles is a huge part of this.
CT , the Supreme Court said this: We hold that the Clean Air Act and the EPA actions it authorizes displace any federal common law right to seek abatement of carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel fired power plants. at 528–529. 7411(b)(1)(B); see also §7411(a)(2). Connecticut , 564 U. 410 (2011). Post, at 20.
This support for EV charging, and by extension EV ownership among individuals and businesses, is key for accelerating the electrification of the transportation sector that we need to make progress on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and local airpollution from transportation. Both programs are set to run for five years.
have long demonstrated leadership on climate change, with more than 170 of them having set targets to phase out fossil energy and many others committing to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. A new Sabin Center report, Cities Climate Law: A Legal Framework for Local Action in the U.S. , Cities around the U.S.
Ecology is seeking input from the public on three main areas of the new air quality program: The indicators to use to identify an overburdened community highly impacted by airpollution, The types of air monitors to deploy to communities, and How communities would like to see air quality improved.
Building electrification requirements – at times called “natural gas bans,” including on this blog – are subject to a complicated interplay of federal, state and local law, and many local governments have been found or determined themselves to be preempted from one or more approaches.
In order to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions needed to sustain a livable climate, we must scale up renewable energy capacity at a rapid pace. The resource bank contains peer-reviewed scientific articles and reports published by governmental agencies and trade organizations, and was compiled by Sabin Center intern Naomi Zimmermann.
These pipelines run through many of our neighborhoods, exposing us and our loved ones to methane pollution. Methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is roughly 80 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, fuels extreme weather across the country by trapping heat in the atmosphere. Click Here to register to attend and for more information.
These communities are often already exposed to lots of airpollution from things like other industries, airports, and nearby highways. Similarly, a study from the Netherlands based on long-term testing also showed the country’s newest facility is emitting much higher levels of dioxin and furans than is allowed by European law.
Statement by Emilia Belliveau, Energy Transition Program Manager Ottawa | Traditional, unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg People – At today’s Parliamentary Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development (ENVI), Members of Parliament grilled the fossil fuel industry about their climate pollution.
billion in Climate Pollution Reduction Grants to implement community-driven solutions that tackle the climate crisis, reduce airpollution, advance environmental justice, and accelerate America’s clean energy transition. On July 22, the US Environmental Protection Agency announced the award of over $4.3
The study-- Hazardous AirPollutants In Transmission Pipeline Natural Gas: An Analytic Assessment -- was accepted for publication in Environmental Research Letters journal September 16. blowdowns and blowouts), which we now know not only contains methane, but also Hazardous AirPollutants and other chemicals.
If built, the Wyalusing plant would have been allowed to emit more than a million tons of climate-pollutinggreenhouse gasses every year, as well as hundreds of tons of noxious airpollutants that would have impacted the local community. O’Neill, PennFuture Senior Attorney.
The panel’s reasoning focused on a close statutory reading of §7410 of the CAA, which prevents EPA from approving any SIP revision that would “interfere with any applicable requirement for attainment and reasonable further progress” in reaching the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (“NAAQS”).
Buildings are one of Colorado’s top five sources of greenhouse gas emissions. As directed by a state law enacted in 2021, as HB 1286, the Colorado Health Department’s AirPollution Control Division developed the newly finalized standards.
On November 22, the Clean Air Council , PennFuture , and the Center for Biological Diversity announced they appealed an extension of Renovo Energy Center’s airpollution permit for a large gas-fired power plant — a significant source of new pollution within an environmental justice area.
“So, under the IIJA, when it's all said and done, DEP will receive upwards and probably more than $400 million to plug orphan and abandoned wells that are currently leaking methane and hazardous airpollutants into the implement. Visit DEP’s Oil and Gas Program Bipartisan Infrastructure Law webpage for more information.
As the law takes effect this winter, we all — including you! — 1 allowance = 1 metric ton of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. To address this concern in Washington, the CCA includes a more expansive air quality program that covers all permitted and unregulated sources of emissions, not just the largest emitters.
DEP said it has the statutory authority in the 1995 law that created the agency, the state AirPollution Control Act and other laws to establish grant and funding programs to implement the Plan. PA Utility Law Project Webinar On Impacts Of LNG Gas Exports On Energy Costs For Pennsylvania Families. Read more here.
Can the new advisory opinion interpreting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) move us beyond the lethargy of unmet climate change policy needs ? By accepting the COSIS request, ITLOS boldly advanced the international law of climate change to take full account of its harmful impacts on the marine environment.
This post is the third in a series of blogs that address specific legal features of the rule: Part One offered a summary of the final rule, and delved into the materiality threshold that was added throughout the rule, including for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions disclosure.
For more information contact Cathy Lodge at: clodge@environmentalintegrity.org. ] “My Administration is making real progress towards tackling a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions here in Pennsylvania, and creating thousands of good-paying, union jobs in the process,” said Gov. Read more here. Josh Shapiro. “We
The Ministry of the Environment appealed on points of law to the Supreme Administrative Court. The cities argued that the regulation would prevent them from imposing restrictions on the circulation of passenger vehicles in relation to their airpollutant emissions. See a detailed analysis of the decision here.).
July 18, 2024), the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed the denial of three nonprofit organizations’ application to intervene in the litigation challenging the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (PADEP) regulation implementing Pennsylvania’s participation in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (the RGGI Regulation).
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