 Having attended several of these energy lectures when I was on campus. I realized that The lectures tend toward the technical side of the energy equation. So I'm mildly apologetic that you have to listen to a lawyer today. But only mildly apologetic because the reality is that the technology is not retarding the transition to clean energy. The law is I think it's important for everybody to understand that. And from my point of view to do what they can to push for change. All of you know that zero carbon energy, including when solar geothermal hydro and nuclear is being deployed now. And particularly for wind and solar are prime for rapid expansion. You also know that it and storage options can make the grid far more efficient. The distributed two way energy and micro grids open up new possibilities. And with continued advances in technology that are happening at Stanford and elsewhere, we can get to a low carbon and even a zero carbon economy. But we need to face the fact that our system of laws and the governance structures that we have created are getting in the way. And that's what I'm going to be focusing on today. I want to say a quick, quick word about the state impact center at NYU. As John mentioned, we work with state attorneys general on clean energy climate and environmental matters. We did a special report in December. The chronicle the 300 actions that ages have been taking in this area in the last three years. And you'll notice the the bottom bar, the black bar is on climate change than a probably the major focus of activity, but also clean energy and energy efficiency, a major focus as well. So in terms of my talk today, I'm going to organize it around three central legal questions. The first being our US environmental laws reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and thereby encouraging clean energy alternatives. Secondly, our US energy laws paving the way toward a clean energy future. Third, our state based clean energy and environmental laws speeding the clean energy transition. So now for a little peek ahead at my conclusions. It's not, it's not a good news story here as implemented. The US environmental laws are not reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and encouraging clean energy alternatives. And as implemented US energy laws are doing little to advance clean energy. More happily, state based clean energy and environmental laws are speeding the clean energy transition despite federal resistance. So imagine if Well, perhaps not a particularly uplifting start, but stay with me. It's an important journey. Journey. So I'm going to move to that first question about the US environmental laws and what they're doing or not doing The two major US environmental laws that deal with with greenhouse gas emissions are the Clean Air Act, which directly regulates them and the National Environmental Policy Act. Which requires the evaluation of greenhouse gas emissions in connection with proposed projects. What we're going to find here in the next few minutes is that these are capable laws, but not when not when in unfriendly hands. All you need to know about the Clean Air Act and greenhouse gases is that this is a recent phenomenon that the Clean Air Act regulates them. The door was opened by the Supreme Court in 2007 when it concluded that the definition of air pollutants into the Clean Air Act is broad enough to encompass greenhouse gases. Which of course back in the 70s when the Clean Air Act got going was was not considered by anybody as a pollutant. That opened the door to the next step, which was the endangerment finding the Clean Air Act requires that once you have an air pollutant. The administrator of EPA in this case Lisa Jackson in 2009 has to determine if those pollutants may pose a danger to public health and welfare. She concluded that six greenhouse gases do and that triggered the the requirement to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That's 2009. So the Obama administration, what are they looking at? How are they going to get started? Well, they're going to look at a pie chart like this. That shows we have massive emissions from the electricity sector, massive emissions from the transportation sector, very large emissions from industry. So, not surprisingly, their initial targets were in all of those sectors. First, the auto sector, cars and light trucks, a big portion of the whole transportation set of emissions. Next, the power sector, the gas fired and coal fired power plants in particular and out of the industrial sector, the oil and gas methane emissions, which are a very important slice of emissions, as I'll talk about more. When you look at these sub parts of those big emissions sectors, this is what the Obama administration was taking on. Very significant in that they took on almost half of the US greenhouse gas emissions in their first foray into regulating those emissions under the Clean Air Act. The power sector, again, is essentially all of the power sector. The auto sector is, which is cars and light trucks, a major portion of transportation. The oil and gas sector is a smaller slice of the industrial sector, which is a particularly difficult sector to embrace and deal with. But it is a discrete and very important source of very powerful methane emissions. So it was a worthy target. So let me give you a preview of what we're going to spend the next five or 10 minutes on, which is the story of what happened with the Obama administration and now with the Trump administration, with regard to these three sectors of emissions and potential emissions reductions. Essentially, the Obama administration put its hand on the dial, the greenhouse gas dial, for these three sectors and turned it back, reducing emissions in each sector, not surprisingly. The Trump administration came in and put his hand on the same dial and turned it in the opposite direction, increasing the greenhouse gas emissions in each sector, and I'll show you how they did that. Now the state attorneys general are challenging these rollbacks in the courts and they think they will prevail, but this is not how the Clean Air Act is supposed to work. In the meantime, the climate clock is ticking and the transition to clean energy certainly has been slowed. But let's go through it and get a little more flavor for that, because it's part of my thesis that the US environmental laws are not working to speed the clean energy transition. So first up was the auto sector. President Obama pushed out the car rule in 2012. This is for automobiles and light trucks with a major fuel economy increase over a long period of time, from model years 2017 to 2025, with approximately 5% year over year increases in fleet fuel economy standards, leading to an expectation of getting to about 54 miles per gallon under the corporate average fuel economy standards by 2025. It was a unique opportunity to do it, because the auto industry had just come out of the recession, had been bailed out by the government. They were able to cut a deal with the EPA, with the Department of Transportation, with the auto industry, and with the state of California. First time ever greenhouse gases were part of that mix. Obama also approved a waiver for California's program, which involved greenhouse gases and zero emission vehicles. No surprise there, because California has rights to impose standards that are stronger than the federal standards under the Clean Air Act. And importantly, other states are able to take advantage of that waiver if they will impose the exact same requirements that California did. And 14 states have done that, so that in fact right now, under the Obama car rule, or at least until two weeks ago, I should say, about 40% of the cars in the United States were subject to the higher standards of the California waiver. What did Trump do on this? He split the rollback in two, and last September revoked the California waiver. That's gone until the court's rule. Litigation's already started, and then on March 30, two weeks ago he issued a final rule that scaled back very substantially the fuel economy greenhouse gas reductions for the period from 2021 to 2026. Instead of 5% per year improvement is back down to 1.5%. And here's the implication of that. An astounding increase over the then current law of 1.5 billion metric tons more CO2 by 2040 by virtue of the scale back of the emission standards that were in place. You can see from the slide it's equivalent to 1.5 billion, it's equivalent to 63 coal fired power plants operating for five years. Tremendous health effects, adverse health effects from the regular combustion products of the tailpipes and tremendous negative economic impacts because drivers will have to spend more money on gas. Now we move to the power sector, the second major sector regulated by, picked for regulation by the president. Many of you know about the Clean Power Plan. Much Valley Hewed final rule published in 2015, August 2015, and the approach that the Obama administration took was to identify statewide carbon dioxide reductions that should be put in place, essentially a cap that would be working down from the status quo, and then give states the flexibility to do whatever they wanted to do in terms of compliance. They could bring in more clean energy, for example, they could decide which of the plants they wanted to retire, which they didn't. A lot of flexibility there, very similar to the structure that the Clean Air Act works in other, in the, in the next program and other programs where EPA identifies the target and the states come up with their plans to meet it. The Trump administration has taken a very different approach. Their replacement rule was published last June. Their view is the Clean Air Act can only be imposed on a source by source basis. It cannot look across the sector and allow the kind of flexibility that the Clean Power Plan adopted in its plan. And that is a practical matter. Leads very few options for controlling greenhouse gas emissions from coal plants, because if you're just looking at what you can do within the fence line, you basically have two options. One potentially would be to do carbon capture and storage. But that's too expensive an EPA's view and too unproven. The only other thing you can do is monkey around with the heat and the combust to try to maximize the combustion of the coal, get get some incremental improvements and incremental reductions in greenhouse gases and guess what's that that's what the rule does. At the same time, folks have looked at the rules say what this is actually going to do is enable some of these plants to stay online longer. So the net is going to be an increase in in emissions from the coal sector. So this is the big illegal issue that's going to play out in the next few years. Who's right. Is it the Trump administration that a Clean Air Act is limited to inside the fence landfixes or is it the Obama view that that that is based on this language in the act, which says that the standard of performance required under section 111 is the standard for emissions of air pollution. The standard for air pollutants achievable through the application of the best system of emissions reduction. That sounds a lot like what the Obama administration did. The stakes on this are enormous, not only because the dials been turned the wrong way and emissions are going to go up in this sector, but also if the very constrained view of the Clean Air Act prevails that architecture means the Clean Air Act is a very limited tool to deal with greenhouse gases. And the greenhouse gas emissions going forward. So the third sector that the Obama administration looked at was the oil and gas sector. It got a late start on oil and gas. It was focusing on methane emissions and the growing concern toward the end of the administration that has only grown more at the fact that there are significant losses of gas slash methane and through venting and through to some extent incomplete combustion of flaring. The reality is that natural gas is less value than the oil that often exists with it. And so if there are no gathering lines available, the industry has been flaring out the wazoo venting and not being very concerned about leaks because it's a relatively low value commodity. So here's what the Obama administration did and the Trump administration response when it came to methane. So again, they got a late start. They only got to do new sources of oil and gas and they had a final rule came out in June 2016 that puts in place a leak detection and repair requirement for new sources. It started looking at existing sources gathering data, but that's as far as it got when the clock ran out for it. The Trump administration has responded in terms of looking at the new sources. By first proposing a watered down leak detection and repair rule with about half as many inspection requirements as had been in the Obama administration's final rule. But then about a year later, last August, it fairly breathtakingly suggested that maybe it wouldn't stop methane at all in the oil and gas, regulate methane at all in the oil and gas industry. It suggested first that actually it thought it only had to look at the production and processing side and not the transmission lines, the big long pipelines. And then it questioned whether there was enough methane being admitted to trigger an endangerment finding, suggesting that that endangerment finding back in 2009 could be sliced and diced and that maybe if you start looking at smaller sources of greenhouse gases, they don't become regulated, which is an astounding new reading of the way the Clean Air Act works. But it appears that they're headed toward a final rule that in fact will let them off the hook for regulating methane in the oil and gas industry. Interestingly, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell all have asked for this regulation. They realize that methane's a problem. Their best selling card for gas is that it's on balance way better than coal. But if the methane releases, which are much more powerful than, again, carbon dioxide, are not regulated, their calling card goes away. They know that. Below the line is another interesting point on methane, the Bureau of Land Management under a very different law, regulated in November 2016, all sources of oil and gas on public lands requiring new limitations on venting and flaring. It did it under the Mineral Leasing Act, which obligates the federal government to stop any parties from wasting federal resources. The view of BLM, the Interior Department was venting and flaring of gas is a waste of an important publicly owned resource. They stopped it. And it threw a very long rulemaking that looked into how best to do it. Trump administration rescinded that rule, just said essentially never mind. We're going back to no regulation of methane on public lands. We're expecting a court decision soon and I have my guess that the Trump administration rule might get overturned, but we'll see. Okay. This is the second big environmental law, the National Environmental Policy Act. This is a different act. It doesn't directly regulate greenhouse gases, but it requires that for any major project that requires a federal approval. There has to be a full evaluation of environmental impacts that may be analyzed so that federal decision makers before they issue their permits or approvals have the opportunity to say, wait a minute. I don't like the environmental impacts of this project. I'm going to walk away. Focus is on disclosure and public input. It's not action forcing. It doesn't require the federal decision maker to make a decision one way or the other, but it requires that decision maker to be informed. And for major projects, typically requires an environmental impact statement where there has to be an evaluation and consideration of alternatives as well as indirect and cumulative impacts. So the good news is that there's broad agreement and the courts have confirmed that NEPA requires consideration of potential climate impacts for major fossil fuel projects. The review needs to take a hard look at what these climate impacts might be, considering direct impacts from the project itself, but also indirect impacts. For example, if it's a gas pipeline, that gas is going to go somewhere and be burned and give off CO2. How much is this gas pipeline facilitating in terms of end use greenhouse gas emissions and cumulative impacts? If there are a series of projects together, how do you tie them together and look at their overall impacts? The not so good news is that the administration is hostile to NEPA analysis of climate impacts. And I'll explain why. I'll give a few facts here. Number one, they rescinded the Obama administration's NEPA climate guidance. It is hard for project proponents to figure out how to evaluate climate impacts. The Obama administration worked for several years on guidance with some benchmarks, came out with it, it's gone, and replaced by guidance that provides essentially no guidance. And number two, and perhaps more importantly, the administration has proposed the first ever major overhaul of the rules under NEPA. These rules have been in place since 1980, and several of the new approaches that are in process, the comet deadline occurred in March, actually, appear to be targeted at climate. For example, under the proposed new rules, there will be no requirement to deal with indirect effects or cumulative effects. It seems like climate. Also, no study is needed for effects that are quote, remote in time, quote, geographically remote, quote, or product or the product of a lengthy causal chain. So many climate impacts, of course, will not immediately demonstrate themselves. It's the impacts may be predictable, but later in time after some other causal activity, etc. So in any event, not not friendly to climate these proposed new regulations. Also not so good news is that clean energy alternatives should be part of the mix of alternatives that are looked at when fossil fuel projects come before a federal decision maker. For example, if there's a major gas pipeline going to the southeast to fill utility need for energy, the decision maker should be able to weigh that against alternatives of renewable energy alternatives. But in fact, that's not happening at all in in NEPA reviews. And not so not not so good news is low priority seems to be given to clean energy projects under under fossil fuel projects are moving very quickly through the administration in terms of the NEPA process. When it came to vineyard winds offshore wind project off of Massachusetts, however, all of us in the Department of Interior said actually we need to look at cumulative impacts and they, they put another year or a year and a half on the schedule for that that NEPA review. So if you're still wondering about my thesis that NEPA is not being well addressed here by the Trump administration. Let me give you a quick very recent example of the administration's antipathy toward climate analysis under NEPA. The example involves the approval of the Jordan Cove Gas Pipeline and LNG plan in Oregon by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under the Natural Gas Act on March 19 lesson a month ago. The Jordan Cove project involves building a 230 mile pipeline across Oregon to an LNG export facility on the coast. So the question before the Commission is whether and if so how climate impact should be addressed when it makes a public interest determination under the Natural Gas Act that it's in the interest national interest to approve the pipeline project and then give the pipeline project proponent eminent domain authority so they can condemn the land they've got full governmental rights boom they put in the pipeline. A quick background in 2017 the District of Columbia Circuit Court ruled in another gas pipeline case a bell trail that FERC can't duck making a careful and fulsome analysis of potential climate impacts associated with the construction of a gas pipeline. In particular it ruled that the pipeline EIS must evaluate indirect emissions associated with upstream gas production and foreseeable downstream combustion to the gas the pipeline will carry providing a full picture of the greenhouse gas emissions. In the Jordan Cove case, however, for the FERC majority said it didn't have enough information to estimate those indirect emissions so it didn't. And in a concurring opinion, Commissioner McNamee went further he asserted that the environment is not the type of public interest consideration that is relevant for a pipeline approval decision under the Natural Gas Act. He emphasized the Natural Gas Act purpose is to enable the public to have access to natural gas and to regulate prices not to look out for the environment. He said if there are concerns about upstream or downstream emissions there are other laws to address those issues so he essentially dismissed NEPA and environmental issues generally as not relevant to the public interest decision making under the Natural Gas Act. It led to a howling descent from Commissioner Glick the lone Democrat on the Commission who said that it was not reasoned decision making for the Commission to conclude that environmental effects overall are acceptable for that pipeline. And that the pipeline is in the public interest without evaluating what he called the most important environmental issue of our time climate change. So that's what we're dealing with when it comes to applying our environmental laws to energy projects these days, which brings me to the second question of the day, are us energy laws paving the way toward a clean energy future. There are a couple of key points here, most us energy laws were enacted in the pre environmental era. That's not a helpful fact, like the Natural Gas Act doesn't talk about the environment only talks about providing access to gas as an example. Across the spectrum of federal clean of federal energy laws, you see a limited affirmative clean energy agenda, lots of R&D, excellent, really important, but not action forcing. That's research and development energy efficiency, also very good, but we'll see shortly under attack, and then clean energy financing. Excellent, and very important to the proliferation of utility scale solar projects and the Obama administration, etc. But that's mostly depleted now, and a bit under a cloud, unfortunately, because of cylindra unfairly. So let's also look at those pre environmental era federal energy laws. And I just, I'm not going to go through them in detail. I want to just say that all of these laws lean into production at your gas act we just talked about that. The mineral leasing act that defines coal oil and gas development on public lands leans into production. This is a 1920 era law lease sale shall be held at least quarterly mandatory. So where's the environment, not not on the screen where's clean energy, not here. Federal Power Act 1920. Interestingly, when it comes to hydropower, that part of power under the Federal Power Act that was modernized in 1986. In a way that gives for a for a relicensing of a dam. Now, quote, unquote, equal consideration has to be given, not only to the power value of the of the dam but also to protection efficient wildlife recreational opportunities energy conservation. That's what happens when you modernize these laws. These laws have not been modernized except in this one example here. And importantly, the next bullet under Federal Power Act, the 1935 amendments are really the big kahuna because they're there what regulate how interstate electricity transmission and wholesale power sales are dealt with and the distinction between federal and state authority under the Federal Power Act more on that in a few minutes. The next phase of energy laws came right after the the oil embargo in the early 70s, when we were very attentive to the fact that the United States was dependent on the the OPEC nations for gasoline and oil generally. So what you have here are our laws that have little coherence in terms of a comprehensive approach. The the commonality here is they're not about the environment. They're really about national security and diversifying energy with with a few forays into clean energy and renewable energy but very early. For example, interestingly, it was the cafe standards that came out now in 1975 in order to save mileage. So this was not an environmental driven interest. It was it was a an energy conservation interest. Lots of attention R&D in the national labs. That's DOE strength, but again, not not pushing toward environmental considerations. Public Utilities Regulatory Policy Act is a bright star in this constellation here in the 70s because it actually provided an important foothold for independent power producers to diversify and and to require utilities to buy their small renewable energy projects. Then you have a grab bag of other programs with the Energy Policy Act of 2005 being particularly important. And an energy efficiency is built here into the 2005 act. The earlier program strengthened here strengthened again in the 2007 follow up energy act. And that's a that's been a real strong point here and a regulatory program that DOE operates, one of the very few regulatory programs that operates. There also was DOE authority to build electricity transmission in this act that failed. We'll talk about that. Wind and solar credit. So we're starting to get some some real help here to renewable energy. The ethanol program was was built here largely in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, and very importantly the loan guarantee program, which explicitly talks about dealing with greenhouse gases. The first time in such a stark way that this is seen as as an important role. And clearly the financing was extremely important. But again it's essentially depleted out and and now in the in largely in the dustbin unfortunately the energy independence and security act as I mentioned the last bullet there reinforced the energy efficiency program. So you have some good things, but what's happened with those good things. Well, the energy efficiency program is arguably the brightest star in the constellation of energy law opportunities that that that push for sensible, not clean energy per se but sensible energy policies that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions. I'll mention one quick item under this law. Very interestingly in 2007 under the Bush administration. The energy law set a technology forcing standard for light bulbs that said that by January one 2020 the incandescent bulb will have to be banned. Unless you can meet a standard of 50 lumens per watt at that time and today incandescent bulbs can't make it. That's what drove the market toward elite the development of LEDs and now the proliferation of LEDs. And the Obama administration actually was expanding the number of bulbs that are dealt with as general service lighting to which this technology standard applied. Before the Trump administration came in and said no to the additional bulbs and as to the original bulbs that had to be banned if they weren't didn't meet the technology standard. It has concocted an argument that that January one 2020 deadline, it does not apply to it. So it is not a it is not honoring the requirements for the reduction of the increase of efficiency. And the NRDC is has calculated that as of 2025 these two decisions by the Trump administration. The reduction of the definition of bulbs that are covered by this energy efficiency standard and then secondly not applying the statutory standard means that utility bills for lighting will be $14 billion more than they would have been. And you're going to need 20 the equivalent of 25 new power plants to drive the electricity needed for these less efficient lighting alternatives. So the bright star we have in the current energy laws, energy efficiency is under attack. And the final point I'll make before moving to my last few points is that the federal transmission laws also are not kind to clean energy. We heard about the pipeline side where the natural gas act provides if there is a showing that it's in the public interest, a green light to go for the project proponent to implement the pipeline, get it in. You've got eminent domain authority you're acting like a government agent, you can condemn land and get that pipeline. Transmission towers and transmission electricity transmission generally is very important for renewable energy some of our best renewable energy resources are in the Great Plains far from from load centers and and even in the southern area of the Great Plains, the ability to take electricity from Oklahoma and Texas, all the way to the southeast, or the northeast is is a problem because of transmission. Interestingly, the 19 the 2005 Energy Act, as I mentioned a couple slides ago, had a provision to empower DOE to take a role here and potentially be a backstop for providing eminent domain authority because the reality is that states were not allowing interstate lines through if they didn't think there was something in it for them. The program's been a debacle, however, the studies that was done in the beginning to establish national interest electric transmission corridors was a failure. And essentially, you have what is in essence a government subsidy to help pipelines go long distances and nothing equivalent for renewable energy transmission. The final part of my discussion is state based energy and environmental laws. This is a happier story. Let me begin though by saying that traditional state energy laws are not particularly friendly to clean energy and are not aligned to accelerate the clean energy transition vertically integrated monopoly utilities are the are found in the majority of states. More all those white states and in fact many of the yellow states are dominated by vertically integrated monopolies. They have a structural bias for the status quo, they own their own energy sources. And certainly they're susceptible to some public pressure and they can be susceptible obviously to state legislatures that tell them they've got to get more clean energy, but they don't really want to. In any event the structure is such that because they own their own production, there's not competition to open up opportunities. That said, opportunities have been opened up by renewable portfolio standards and targets. This, this is truly amazing, arguably about half the growth in the US renewable energy generation since 20 since 2000 has been attributable to state renewable energy requirements for utilities. Most of the states are relatively modest 10 to 15% but 1313 states have 50% or more requirements that they get they get their power from renewable energy that's opened up the market. The last year has brought an amazing number of states forward, making huge commitments to have clean energy in their states that look at that chart for 2019 it's breathtaking. Now these are commitments that are out 2030 years. So it's okay to be a little cynical about it there's not necessarily a plan to get there, but the states are saying we are going to try to get there. What are they doing, how are they trying to get there. Well, there are all sorts of progressive clean energy oriented state laws out there that are that have sprouted and that are powering very significant changes in the energy mix in states. So we have all back to the point about vertically integrated utilities. There was a deregulatory wave in the late 1990s that where utilities started to and were told to by their states to divest of their energy production. It was a merchant energy business that was in competition for the utilities to serve them. And that created a new dynamic and new opportunities for the non incumbents renewable energy etc and as prices came down for wind and solar. They, they, they have increased their market share substantially in part because of this early divestment of energy production by in by many states but still the majority again are vertically integrated utilities and and are not influenced by that. Also, a lot of behind the meter energy options are popping up utilities have typically resisted these at least initially rooftop solar because of concerns about the prices pay the retail prices paid back to the to the the rooftop the the residential owners, not being enough to support the grid, but but that's been worked through it a lot of states, there's storage there's demand response micro grids. All of a sudden a different relationship with the customer has developed, which also has been by the way, accelerated because some of the biggest customers, the data centers that Amazon's Microsoft's of the world, Google's of the world are insisting that they get more clean energy. And finally the decarbonization tools. It's a big tool chest that we see out in the states we mentioned the renewable portfolio standards. In order to keep nuclear zero carbon nuclear going. Some of the big nuclear states including New York, New Jersey and Illinois have developed zero emission credits programs to keep them in in play, as long as they can because of the zero carbon attributes. We have carbon capture rather carbon cap and trade programs. California, of course, is the gold standard with an economy wide cap and trade program. We have a more modest program but interesting program in a dozen or so northeast states the regional greenhouse gas initiative. And more recently the transportation climate initiative, which seek which operate as as cap and trade programs to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector and the transportation sector respectively. We've got low carbon fuel standards in California and Oregon we have electric vehicle incentives under the California waiver now in at least 14 states. You've got potential carbon taxes New York State is looking seriously at a carbon tax. So the states are truly the area that of innovation these days when it comes to clean energy. There are other state based tools that play in the energy and environmental space, including the state authorities to essentially slow down fossil fuel projects where fossil fuel projects are not consistent with state goals and state policies to decarbonize aggressively. We have states have very important authority under section 401 of the Clean Water Act to object to a federally approved project that in the state's view is inconsistent with state water quality standards. This has been used to stop the Constitution pipeline in New York. The state has relied on section 401 to object to the millennium coal terminal in Washington state. There are other examples around the country of section 401 and in fact, it's raised the ire of the Trump administration. And the Trump administration has started a rulemaking to reduce the scope of section 401, and in particular, dealing with the timing and content of state objections. Also, there have been objections by states to the taking of state lands by, for example, pipelines, both in Maryland and in New Jersey, there are current there's current litigation on that. The Clean Air Act gives state downwind states good neighbor rights, it has the right to ask EPA to take enforcement action under the against upstream upwind I should say upwind sources that are causing the pollution to blow into their area and make it make it unable for them to meet their air quality standards. Right now there's litigation against the Trump administration by Maryland, by Delaware, by New York for not enforcing their good neighbor rights. State objections can also include citing restrictions and fracking bands, for example, in Portland, Maine, there's a restriction on the citing of a of a proposed oil export terminal. But the Jordan, the Oregon objections to the Jordan Cove case that I just mentioned they have a 401 claim, and they also have a claim under the Coastal Zone Management Act against that proposed project. And some states have fracking bands like New York and Maryland and others others have restrictions on the where you can frack etc. The local and state clean energy assistance ideas are tools are being used. New York State just enacted a renewable energy citing law that's intended to facilitate quicker citing of renewable energy projects. There are local laws banning gas hookups because of the need the view that we need to electrify residences rather than having them. Reliant on fossil fuel gas. In fact, there are 30 jurisdictions in California alone that either require or recommend all electric housing. And we have states moving out on financing assistance to kind of stepping in where do we once was to help facilitate government backing of private money to leverage money to deploy clean energy very important. I'm going to very briefly mentioned that these state aggressive state actions are creating questions under the interstate commerce, whether the Commerce Clause of the Constitution about whether they're discriminating against out of state interest so that's an area where there's a lot of litigation to date. The states have been able to win those cases because they are not favoring their internal industries, they are they're acting in their state interest, but not discriminating against out of state energy providers. I mentioned the 401 issues are in play. And the final item I want to talk about is the scope of state authority to implement clean energy preferences under the federal power act. This is incredibly important. That all between federal energy regulatory commission and the states federal regulatory commission has authority over the interstate sale of electricity. States have very significant rights under the federal power act to regulate and decide what generation they want they can shape the electricity system in the state of their choice. They also have, of course, plenary authority when it comes to distribution and retail sale of electricity. FERC is right now saying that state supports of clean energy, state supported clean energy is depressing prices on interstate markets. I think that the subsidies given by some states to like the nuclear plants under the ZEC program, or even resource. The renewable portfolio standards gives an unfair advanced price advantage to to these resources when they bid into a capacity market, they call it an out of market influence. And these are saying, wait a minute, we have authority under the federal power act to shape our preferred energy mix, you should be deferring to our rights to subsidize what we want and respect those rights. And by the way, these subsidies reflect a valuable energy attribute that should be acknowledged in the interstate markets, and they also reflect a market failure in the energy market by not accounting for carbon costs. So we're subsidizing these, these renewable and clean energy fuels. And finally, it's hypocritical for FERC to say, we got a problem with subsidies when it comes to state supported clean energy subsidies. We're not going to look at federal subsidies that incumbent fossil fuel providers get. That's a big, big issue that is just burst onto the scene here within the last year. That's really the key takeaways. You saw the slide early. Let's see if you agree with it now. My conclusions that are as implemented US environmental laws are not reducing greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and thereby encouraging clean energy alternatives. As implemented US energy laws are doing little to advance clean energy. And finally, state based clean energy environmental laws are speeding the clean energy transition, despite federal resistance. Imagine if that's it. Great. Well, thanks very much, David. We have some time for general audience questions and I've collected quite a few through the Q&A portal. So I thought your talk was a tour de force in terms of covering a lot of ground comprehensively that's difficult to summarize distinctly which you're able to do. I'm doing some of the highest level questions for you together. Given your experience, long experience in the legal side and energy analysis side, environmental analysis side. I could see in general we picked up kind of three general responses one how dare they do this, and why don't we just fight back through the legal system. For one example, one questioner said, if the cleaner act was used to justify a waiver and not say it was not done by executive powers how can they actually not grant that waiver to is as you've started this on, could we use energy water law constitutional law. Julianna, the US say constitutional right conjure against and third maybe closer to where you seem to be going is what about what I would call non national government organizations which could be states, it could be the private sector could be philanthropic or other types of NGOs perhaps working together all the strategic energy allowance and the breakthrough energy institute and breakthrough energy ventures. So, given that you have this incredible expertise that's at a contacts and knowledge. How do you allocate your own time and what you would you recommend for the participants in the seminar is a place to focus before and after a change in the administration. Well, that's a good question or series series of questions. A few thoughts. One is, I think it's the time. If you're interested in clean energy to be to lawyer up and fight against what I think are inappropriate interpretations of the law. I don't think it's important to recognize that our legal system has a lot of gaps in it. It's got some ambiguities and important laws that restrict their potential use, and that that hopefully we will have a Congress. I'm not sure they can get things done. And we ought to be ready with fixes for the laws to modernize them in the way that I talked about. And that involves a whole of society effort by the way, and certainly NGOs are very well positioned they've been part of the legal fight alongside the state attorneys general on all of these matters. And, and I'm very encouraged by what the states are doing. A lot of that is grassroots oriented that part of the vertically integrated utility model that I didn't talk about is the fact that in some states like Florida and Nevada. They've raised up and done ballot initiatives that have told their utilities to go to and we're going to you're going to open up to competition you're going to allow us to produce energy as customers, etc. There's, there's a lot of, there are a lot of forums for activity. Another example on the sort of broader civil society part is the fact that, and I alluded to it briefly but the major energy buyers have come together and formed an alliance to try to influence state, state legislatures to open up their markets to enable a Google to if they're willing to to build their whole their own plant. And yet in Virginia they they're they're the answer until recently has been, Oh, no, you give us the money to the utility dominion and will build it. We can't have you owning that. So, you also mentioned Giuliani and constitutional issues. Energy and environment both are really well statute up if you will. And the problem is that the statutes don't all fit and and are a varying equality and are not modernized. There are relatively few I think constitutional opportunities at a very high level to establish principles that are going to as a practical matter on the ground, help the transition to clean energy happen sooner. But certainly lawsuits against oil and gas providers and liability suits and all that's going on as well. So it's a it's a great time to be a lawyer I had gotten so that I like not being a lawyer but it seems like the time to be a lawyer so that's what I'm telling you today. On that we have one final question I'm going to preempt a couple of other ones with some great questions in the queue you'll probably hear in the student session afterwards. Now, now that I know you're running this big center at NYU is following your website, a good way to keep up on all the things you've talked about or are there resources you use for that purpose for some combination. Yes, thank you, John. Our websites got a wealth of information about all the things I talked about. If you Google NYU and State Impact Center, it'll pop up. I also have a bi-weekly newsletter that includes a commentary from me and that highlights the recent AG activity in this area. If you go under press and publications you'll see called legally speaking newsletter. Get it get on the mailing list and love to have everyone on this call get more educated about the incredibly important activity that's underway right now. Super with that said we're just about out of time I'd like to thank you once again for a comprehensive but so much sobering talk, which in the end I thought was quite inspiring as you ended up with some advice for the young students to take on board to try to change the world in the future in a positive way so thank you once again. We really appreciate it and we owe you a trip out here anytime you're interested in doing so. Thank you very much, David. Thank you so much john. Thanks for having me.