After Biden, The Realigned Rubik’s Cube on Energy, Land Use, and Environmental Law

Environmental Law Explored: A Podcast SEERies

In this podcast Steven Ferrey (Suffolk University Law School) and Steve Weissman (Center for Law, Energy & the Environment), two experts in environmental/energy/land use law analyzing what became a legal Rubik’s Cube with many different moving pieces to be realigned by attorneys and clients. New policy is changing electric power to move most of the U.S. economy rapidly to utilize electric power in lieu of conventional direct use of fossil fuels for heating, vehicles, and industry. This fundamental transformation occurs amid demands for much more electric power for artificial intelligence, data centers, and cryptocurrency mining, with the Supreme Court in West Virginia v. EPA declaring that “The electric power sector is among the largest in the U.S. economy, with links to every other sector.” This podcast identifies multiple resulting new challenges and provides legal “workarounds” regardless of who sits in the White House.

French President Macron warned the U.S. Congress: “We’re killing our planet. Let us face it. There is no Planet B.” As the United States now rapidly responds to move to clean energy to power our future, in mid-2024 the Supreme Court fundamentally altered legal options:

• Creating a new major questions doctrine fundamentally reducing presidential power particularly related to energy, clean air, and climate;
• Critically “overruling” the most cited Supreme Court decision in the last 50 years, which also involves the environment
• Eliminating the ability of certain federal agencies enforcing laws to impose civil fines; and
• Extending dramatically the statute of limitations to challenge federal regulations affecting environment/energy/land-use (renewable electricity is less dense and requires five to ten times as much land as conventional generation of electricity)

This podcast provides a user-friendly road map through this fast-realigning legal maze, and for those interested this podcast is backed up by a new ABA book (Powering the Future: A Lawyer's Guide to Clean Energy) containing all precedent and providing state-by-state charts analyzing barriers, legal differences, and how lawyers may take advantage of achievable workarounds region-by-region.