These days, environmental policy is often established indirectly. While “Schoolhouse Rock” may have taught some of us “How a Bill Becomes a Law,” its insights are less relevant in the current era where things like purportedly “not final” actions by the executive branch and litigation.
As we move toward two full years of the Biden Administration, we can see the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) environmental justice (EJ) efforts move from the creation of new offices and guidance materials toward seeing EJ-focused changes occurring in EPA’s efforts.
Partner Jane E. Montgomery was quoted on how the Inflation Reduction Act’s 30% energy storage tax credit could bolster large-scale battery manufacturers’ appeal to investors in renewable energy technology.
Standing is a major issue in nearly all environmental citizen suit cases. A split panel of the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a district court’s award of a $14.25 million Clean Air Act (CAA) penalty against a petroleum company which had been found liable for “thousands.”
Partner J. Michael Showalter was quoted on the ways low-income communities could access renewable and clean energy as a result of tax credits, increased federal funding, and other benefits from the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act.
The Biden Administration has long been clear that it believes environmental justice (EJ) issues should be at the forefront of federal environmental law.
US Senate Democrats Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin reached a compromise on the fiscal year 2022 budget reconciliation that includes $369 billion in new spending to spur clean energy and technology over the next decade. The bump in spending would be off-set by corporate tax changes.
New legislation often starts a cat-and-mouse game between the executive branch and regulated entities related to how statutory language is implemented. While we often write about environmental statutes, the procedural mechanisms governing how statutes may be implemented are generally similar.
We have discussed infrastructure resilience, remediation, green technologies, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Today, we focus on a central theme woven into President Biden’s proposal: equity and environmental justice.
We have previously blogged about President Biden’s infrastructure plan released in late March. The sweeping $2 trillion plan provides a blueprint designed to strengthen America’s infrastructure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
President Biden’s sweeping infrastructure proposal, the American Jobs Plan, takes a broad view of what constitutes infrastructure and tackles many of the issues President Biden highlighted in his campaign, including climate change, the state of the country’s traditional infrastructure.
As climate change is integrated more and more into the planning of corporate opportunities and risks, the Fourth National Climate Assessment released last week may be a valuable resource to assess how climate change may impact your plants or business strategy on the horizon.