Climate and Energy Law Symposium

Last Friday, I attended a series of talks at the Climate and Energy Law Symposium. The panel was titled “Instrument Choice Over Time: Stability vs. Ossification.” The overall theme of the panel was to suggest ways in which to make climate and energy laws as effective as possible over time and the types of legal changes that can be made to accomplish this. Leslie Carothers, President of the Environmental Law Institute, spoke about the Waxman-Markey Bill and its purpose to set a maximum number of greenhouse gases and sources from which they can be obtained. The bill would create standards for producing electricity from renewable sources and standards for energy efficiency. It would also introduce a cap-and-trade scheme, which places caps on emissions and distributes emissions allowances via auction and free allocation, increasing the amount auctioned and decreasing the amount of free allocation each year. There is also an option for parties to buy additional allowances from other lower cost sources to reduce the overall cost of the program. According to Carothers, a great degree of complexity is needed in terms of the scope and allowances of the bill as well as with the legislation, to keep costs down and provide greater flexibility. This was a common theme among the speakers of the panel, who suggested ways to incorporate legislation in differing degrees to attain the best possible outcome.