Editors' Summary

Climate change legislation and rulemaking will present fertile ground for judicial inquiry. Specifically, the courts can expect to field challenges to the scope of EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, the scope of state authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and citizen access to the courts to seek damages, challenge projects, or enforce climate regulations. Ideally, Congress will decide many of these issues in forthcoming legislation, but one can expect many more to fall to the federal courts to resolve.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

In the coming months, U.S. companies that sell their shares on public stock exchanges will be filing annual reports with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In part, those SEC filings aim to allow investors to see the company's prospects from management's perspective. In their filings, management describes developments it sees on the horizon that have the potential to affect their companies' operations--and profits.

Editors' Summary

Editors' Summary

Conventional wisdom suggests that the future of coal-fired power generation—from which the United States derives roughly one-half of its power—depends in no small part on the realization of geologic sequestration of carbon emissions in underground formations (for more on this, see Climate Change Deskbook §1.2.3.1.2). Two recent proposals by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) bring this issue to the fore: the Agency’s prevention of significant deterioration (PSD) tailoring rule and its geologic sequestration well rule.

Editors' Summary:

California has been struggling with how to implement its requirement that a certain percentage of energy consumed in the state come from renewable (e.g., solar, wind, biomass) sources. So-called renewable portfolio standards (RPSs) have become a popular way for states to try to wean themselves off energy derived from burning fossil fuels, thereby avoiding the resulting carbon dixoide emissions.

Any private entity with significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions could be identified in the next climate change lawsuit. Filed in 2004 by a coalition of states and land trusts, Connecticut v. American Electric Power was the first major climate change lawsuit identifying private entities as defendants. On September 21, 2009, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in Connecticut permitted plaintiffs to seek an order capping the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions of five electric utilities by certain percentages for at least 10 years. Less than a month later, the U.S.