Environmental Law Institute to Explore and Recommend Energy Conservation Measures

The Environmental Law Institute is undertaking a major research effort to locate and create legal and administrative means for encouraging energy conservation at the state and local level. The research, funded for an eighteen-month period by a $498,000 grant from the National Science Foundation, will employ four Institute attorneys, an economist, and a manager to direct a search for legal materials and structures which mandate or encourage energy conservation, as well as those which presently stand as impediments to efficient energy usage.

During the spring of 1975, the Institute will ask law schools in six states to coordinate student research directed at discovering legal materials which may, both in obvious and in indirect or unlikely ways, affect energy use patterns. The states chosen for intensive study — Florida, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, Vermont, and Wisconsin — are considered a representative cross section of the nation as a whole, in light of their diversity in density of population, weather, and economic base. It is therefore expected that the student research, which will be supplemented by a data collection effort on the part of the Institute, should uncover most of the existing legal and administrative structures and methods which control or affect energy usage.

The Institute will be assisted by the services of technical conslutants in identifying areas in which Americans can curb and waste of energy. The Institute will analyze both the existing strategies which have been located by the student researchers and the areas where technical consultants suggest potential high energy savings, in order to craft model laws and ordinances which may be useful to states and localities seeking means of promoting energy conservation.

ELI will report research to city and state officials through a series of publications, and reports mailed to potential users at frequent intervals in order to keep them up-to-date on the progress of the research. One such interim report, with references to all existing energy conservation laws and regulations, will be made available during the summer of 1975. The final report of the project will be a series of handbooks containing the full texts of various suggested laws and administrative regulations for encouraging energy conservation. The handbooks will address themselves individually to the needs of various levels and departments of government, so as to maximize their relevance and utility. In addition to the written materials, a number of workshops are planned to introduce the materials to potential users and to discuss means of adapting them to the needs of a particular locality or governmental unit.

ELR readers may assist the Institute in carrying out this project by drawing to the attention of the researchers relevant state and local legal materials of all kinds.Any ELR reader wishing to be placed on the project's mailing list (or to place city, county or state officials on the list) should write to the project's principal investigator, Grant P. Thompson, at the following address: Environmental Law Institute, Energy Conservation Project, 1346 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Suite 620, Washington, D.C. 20036.