by Cliff Smith FME Law Counsel What do you get when you put dozens of “green”lawyers together with nothing in particular to accomplish and more money than they know what to do with? Someone could be excused for thinking that this sounds like the start of a really bad lawyer joke. Unfortunately, it’s anything but. [...]
By Chaim Mandelbaum FME Law Counsel On March 8th 2012 the Constellation Energy Group agreed to a settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).[1] The $245 million dollar settlement was a huge win for FERC’s Office of Enforcement, which had opened the investigation into Constellation in January 2008, only to see it languish for [...]
Click here to download a complete pdf version of E&E Legal Letters Issue III. Click on headlines for the full article. Colorado’s RES Case Heads to 10th Circuit Appeals Court by Dr. David Schnare, E&E Legal General Counsel In May, the U.S. District Court for Colorado cleared the path for appellate review by the U.S. [...]
By Dr. David Schnare General Counsel In May, the U.S. District Court for Colorado cleared the path for appellate review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit of the question as to whether Colorado can force renewable energy producers in other states to meet Colorado regulations. The District Court decision is in [...]
by Clifford Smith FME Law Counsel When most Americans think of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), they probably think of the Great Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal public works programs designed to employ the unemployed masses in the rural south. The program was popular and fairly successful in providing cheap power to area [...]
By Chaim Mandelbaum FME Law Counsel On June 5, 2013, the first of a series of news stories appeared revealing the extent of the information leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. Ultimately, this information exposed a massive effort on the part of the National Security Agency (NSA) to collect “metadata” about electronic communications such as [...]
by Clifford Smith FME Law Counsel On June 2, the Obama Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled regulations that require states to cut carbon emissions 30 percent by 2030. A radical, unilateral move that will cause energy prices to “skyrocket”, cost countless jobs, and disproportionally hurt the poor, it's not surprising that the Obama Administration sought [...]
Click here to download a complete pdf version of E&E Legal Letters Issue II. Click on headlines for the full article. EPA’s NSPS is Unconstitutional: Regulatory Comment by Dr. David Schnare, E&E Legal General Counsel The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), on behalf of its members, comments that EPA’s proposed rule to control [...]
by Dr. David Schnare E&E Legal General Counsel The Energy & Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal), on behalf of its members, comments that EPA’s proposed rule to control greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act’s New Source Performance Standards is unconstitutional as a substantive due process violation of the Fifth Amendment because it constitutes a [...]
by Chaim Mandelbaum Counsel, The Free Market Environmental Law Center In 1966, the federal government passed the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), in order to give people greater insight into the operations of the government, and to allow them oversight on how the government spends their money. States soon followed suit and passed their own [...]
