State GHG policies confront federal roadblocks.
Steven Ferrey is a professor of law at Suffolk University Law School, and has served as visiting professor of law at Harvard Law School and at Boston University Law School. He’s authored numerous articles and books about energy and environmental law and policy, including the books Environmental Law: Examples and Explanations, 4th Ed., 2007; The Law of Independent Power, 18th ed., 2009 (a 3-volume treatise); and Renewable Power in Developing Countries, 2006. He has served as legal advisor to the World Bank and U.N. on carbon-control and energy issues for the past 15 years. Parts of this article were adapted from Ferrey’s article, “Goblets of Fire: Potential Constitutional Impediments to the Regulation of Global Warming,” University of California at Berkeley’s Ecology Law Quarterly, vol 34:835, 2009.
In the absence of federal action in the United States, several states have taken the lead with innovative carbon regulatory schemes. Ten Eastern states have combined into the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) to regulate CO2 from their power plants,1 California has initiated a comprehensive regulation of all greenhouse gases (GHGs) from all sources,2 and other Western3 and Midwestern4 states are undertaking global-warming mitigation programs.