In the Media – Page 123 – Environmental and Energy Law Program

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Wall Street Journal

Wildfires Drove PG&E to Bankruptcy, Where Utility Must Change to Survive

Ari Peskoe, director of Harvard Law School’s electricity law initiative, said the changing nature of PG&E’s customer base mirrors broader challenges to the monopolistic business model many U.S. utilities have enjoyed for decades.

“There’s a larger issue at hand regarding how utilities are coping with new technology,” Mr. Peskoe said. “Maybe this is an opportunity for the industry to think about this differently.”

February 5, 2019

San Diego Union-Tribune

Talks to avoid a messy legal fight over California’s emissions rules appear stalled

“I’ve seen a lot of going through the motions,” said Jody Freeman, a Harvard environmental law professor who is not involved in the current talks but worked on the first set of national vehicle emissions standards under President Obama. During those negotiations, Freeman said she required agency staff with technical expertise to be deeply involved.

February 5, 2019

Law360

Fate Of Trump Energy Agenda Hazy Despite Shutdown’s End

Joseph Goffman, who worked with the Obama-era EPA and is another 2013 shutdown veteran, said it’s a coin flip whether the latest shutdown was long enough to push back finalization of major rules such as the CPP repeal and its replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, so that the inevitable legal challenges stretch past the 2020 elections.

January 29, 2019

Associated Press

Trump rollbacks for fossil fuel industries carry steep cost

Joe Goffman, a former EPA official who helped create the clean power plan and now at Harvard Law School, said the omission of international impacts “doesn’t track with reality” given that climate change is a worldwide problem.

January 29, 2019

High Country News

Zinke leaves unfinished business at the Interior Department

“We see a pattern of attempts to suspend compliance with agency rules,” that doesn’t adhere to the Administrative Procedures Act, said Hana Vizcarra, the staff attorney for Harvard Law’s Environmental and Energy Law Program.

January 24, 2019

Marketplace

EPA decision could make it harder to impose environmental rules

“There’s a good chance that some companies will stop operating the (mercury pollution reducing) equipment to save money.”

January 22, 2019

Buzzfeed

If The Wall Is A National Emergency, Then What About Climate Change?

“The kinds of changes needed to address climate change need to be sustained and durable and to marshal a broad range of societal resources,” Joseph Goffman, executive director of the Harvard Environmental and Energy Law Program, said in an email.

January 22, 2019

Audobon News

EPA Says Limiting Mercury Pollution From Power Plants Is No Longer ‘Appropriate and Necessary’

“While the headline is reassuring that the standards are proposed to be left in place, the underlying action here, which is removing the ‘appropriate and necessary’ finding, suddenly makes those regulations legally vulnerable in a way that they weren’t,” says Joseph Goffman, executive director of the Environmental and Energy Law Program at Harvard University and a former EPA official.

January 22, 2019

S&P Global

US EPA’s mercury proposal could pave way for court challenge to Obama-era rule

Joseph Goffman, senior legal counsel in the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation under Obama, said in a Jan. 3 interview that a direct line can be drawn between the EPA’s recent mercury proposal and the stayed challenge to the MATS supplemental finding. “The seed of this was [the Trump administration’s] conclusion in the spring of 2017 that they didn’t want to defend the previous administration’s position,” he said. “In fact, had they done so, it would have been deeply inconvenient to their overall campaign to weaken the application of co-benefits.”

January 22, 2019