Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is really important and timely in that it asks some key questions and makes some key points. One of the important observations in the article, and the authors’ rationale for tackling these siting issues, is that if we continue to do things as we have, there will be more renewable energy projects that fail than need to fail. Part of what that means is tackling the conflicts around renewable siting.

Prof. Christiana Ochoa et al.’s Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help is a thought-provoking piece that coincides with significant growth in the wind industry, as well as broad-based expansion of county-level ordinances regulating wind power. It is a useful contribution to the literature and to the conversation around this topic.

Deals in the Heartland: Renewable Energy Projects, Local Resistance, and How Law Can Help disproportionately focuses on the negative and the opposition’s talking points with respect to wind energy projects. While it is important to highlight the challenges we are facing, it is also important to highlight the actual data. For example, the article reiterates a lot of the negative impacts around wildlife, sound, health, aesthetics, shadow flickering, and property values.

This Article offers proposals for better engagements, relationships, and deals with local communities contemplating wind farms. Because the rapid expansion of wind energy to date has exhausted the first-mover rural communities, the promise of wind energy depends on reluctant rural communities that may require the legal, relational, and policy innovations proposed herein if they are to grant their consent to future wind farms and participate in the renewable energy transformation.

Choice architecture as defined by Professor Mormann in Climate Choice Architecture is helpful and important, but it is also easy to overestimate its impact. It is not everything. This Comment argues that choice architecture is framing a decision at the point of decisionmaking, presenting a list in a specific way, like the decoy effect, setting defaults. Sometimes, social norms and feedback is choice architecture if presented at the time of making a decision or if presented at the optimal choice opportunity.

Prof. Felix Mormann’s introduction in Climate Choice Architecture masterfully highlights the pivotal role of behavioral change in tackling the global climate crisis, and underscores the profound impact of choice architecture—subtle changes in decision environments—on influencing climate-conscious decisionmaking. Drawing from the seminal works of Nobel Laureate Richard Thaler and Prof. Cass Sunstein, Professor Mormann champions the strategic use of small “nudges” to guide individuals and organizations toward sustainable outcomes.

Prof. Felix Mormann’s Climate Choice Architecture comprehensively catalogs and classifies different types of nudge interventions that can be used to combat climate change. He argues that choice architecture can complement command-and-control mandates, market-based incentives, and other forms of regulation while also acknowledging its limitations.

Prof. Felix Mormann’s Climate Choice Architecture provides a comprehensive framework and a masterful summary of the state of knowledge on behavioral nudges as they are applied to environmental outcomes. It does a great job of summarizing the literature and also crosses over from energy into water as well. This Comment supports Professor Mormann's conclusion that nudges can be very powerful instruments for achieving climate goals.

Successful climate change mitigation and adaptation require behavioral change at an unprecedented scale. Fortunately, behavioral research has proven that minor tweaks to the choice environment can usher in a paradigm shift toward more climate-friendly decisionmaking. This Article makes the case for greater reliance on choice architectural nudges as a catalyst for more climate-friendly decisionmaking across a wide range of contexts.

The Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) is published by the Environmental Law Institute’s (ELI’s) Environmental Law Reporter in partnership with Vanderbilt University Law School. This Comment highlights the results of the ELPAR article selection process and reports on the environmental legal scholarship for the 2022-2023 academic year, including the number of environmental law articles published in general-interest law reviews versus environment-focused law journals, and the topics covered in the articles.