Energy at ELI: Greening Our National Energy Transformation

America’s energy economy is undergoing a set of profound shifts that are placing new demands on laws and policies. If current legal and institutional conditions are left alone, they will thwart the rapid adoption of cleaner energy and produce perverse environmental results from all forms of energy development, both old and new. ELI presses under-recognized, but key legal reforms that will green this energy transformation.

The nation’s energy portfolio is expanding to include larger investments in wind, solar, and tidal energy, as well as biofuels such as algae and fuel crops, presenting new conflicts and tradeoffs. At the same time, domestic exploitation of unconventional sources of natural gas, production of oil and gas from more difficult settings both onshore and offshore, and continued record-setting coal production using intensive methods, are producing new environmental conflicts. In the contest among new energy sources, law will have a great deal to say about winners and losers, subsidies and preferences — changing the shape of impacts on the nation’s communities, lands, and waters, for good or for ill.

ELI’s recent and ongoing projects to green the energy transformation include:

• Our 2010 comparison of tax and direct subsidies to the green and carbon energy, Estimating U.S. Government Subsidies to Energy Sources: 2002-2008. These became the figures widely relied upon to frame the national debate in Congress and the media. ELI is currently updating and expanding these findings.
• We are working with three Mid-Atlantic States to revise their permit programs, coastal laws, and planning laws to support offshore wind.
• In 2011, ELI collected and evaluated the state laws and local ordinances governing wind siting in all 50 states, and defined the key provisions and identified models in State Enabling Legislation for Commercial-Scale Wind Power Siting and the Local Government Role. We also identified best practices and opportunities for Siting Wind Facilities on State-Owned Lands and Waters.
• ELI and The Nature Conservancy are working collaboratively to build effective habitat mitigation that applies to renewable energy and natural gas expansion in the Appalachian region.
• ELI has undertaken to identify the state and federal laws that directly and indirectly affect water use by energy facilities, and the limitations, gaps, and reform opportunities created by these laws.
• We are doing collaborative research to integrate energy issues into Coastal and Marine Spatial Planning.
• We are convening a highly regarded series of seminars on ocean energy and renewable energy.