The authors of Energy Exactions make a compelling case for the use of energy exactions as a local policy tool that could complement important state policies. However, it must be designed carefully and tailored to different land uses and locations so it effectively supplements state and utility policy and does not become a barrier to housing affordability and enabler of suburban sprawl.
New residential and commercial developments often create costs in the form of congestion and burdens on municipal infrastructure. Citizens typically pay for infrastructure expansion associated with growth through their property taxes, but local governments sometimes use cost-shifting tools to force developers to pay for—or provide—new infrastructure themselves. These tools are forms of “exactions”—demands levied on developers to force them to pay for the burdens new projects impose.
Prof. Jill E. Fisch has authored an excellent piece about sustainability disclosure. Her proposal to mandate a new Sustainability Disclosure and Analysis section of SEC filings is an interesting idea for improving the disclosures that investors currently receive regarding such important matters as climate change, human capital, and a range of other issues. She also proposes that company management certify as to the accuracy of these disclosures, another step toward improved disclosure.
Sustainability disclosure is at an impasse. Today’s environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure is not delivering the decision-useful information financial markets need, yet the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) so far has not taken steps to formalize sustainability disclosure. Prof. Jill E.
As we have come to expect from Prof. Jill Fisch, her recent article entitled Making Sustainability Disclosure Sustainable introduces a novel and thoughtful policy proposal on a matter of critical importance to investors. In short, she suggests a new sustainability discussion and analysis (SD&A) section within the corporate annual report. In their SD&A, companies would be required to identify and explain the three sustainability issues most significant to their operations.
In her Making Sustainability Disclosures Sustainable article, Prof. Jill E. Fisch proposes creating a Sustainability Discussion and Analysis (SD&A) section to expressly obligate reporting companies to disclose their three most significant sustainability issues in annual reports to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Professor Fisch posits that the proposed SD&A, as a workable first step in mandating sustainability disclosures, would provide comparability and reliability to reports that are currently difficult to compare and which may vary in reliability.
The extent to which corporations should incorporate sustainability objectives into their operational decisionmaking is highly contested, as is the relationship between societal impact and economic value. At the same time, issuers are incorporating sustainability considerations into their business operations in response both to investor demands and to the claim that sustainable business practices lead to improved economic performance.
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is a little-known and too-often ignored federal authority with the power to block or rapidly accelerate the transition to a clean energy future, and is thus indispensable to addressing climate change. Institute for Policy Integrity scholars Bethany A. Davis Noll and Burcin Unel are to be applauded for bringing into focus a regulatory space that is essential to efforts to decarbonize the power sector.
Electricity generation in the United States is one of the leading sources of greenhouse gas emissions, which cause severe climate change-related harms. Despite the severity of those harms, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulates the interstate transmission and wholesale electricity markets, has avoided addressing the issue. FERC has historically shied away from environmental considerations in ratemaking.
This article highlights the results of the Environmental Law and Policy Annual Review (ELPAR) article selection process and reports on the environmental legal scholarship for the 2018-2019 academic year, including the number of environmental law articles published in general law reviews versus environmental law journals, and the topics covered in the articles.