The EPIC Energy Blog

Climate planning is a relatively new science.  And like all sciences still in their infancy, numerous methodologies exist for accomplishing essentially the same task.

There are many aspects to developing a climate plan, however aspects fundamental to all climate plans include:

1. developing an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions for a given jurisdiction,
2. identifying which federal, state, and local greenhouse gas mitigation measures to include in the climate plan,
3. setting realistically achievable greenhouse emissions reductions targets,
4. determining how much each mitigation measure contributes to reaching the targets,
5. and finally developing an implementation and monitoring strategy.

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(Many thanks to Joseph Mandry for his research and writing for this post).

On January 22, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals denied petitions to rehear Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey, en banc. Rocky Mountain Farmers Union v. Corey, 740 F. 3d 507 (9th Cir. 2014). Two opinions, a dissent and a concurrence, accompanied the denial.

In response to the court’s decision to deny a rehearing of Corey, Circuit Judge M. Smith wrote in dissent that Corey was decided wrongly for two reasons, and thus, the petition for rehearing en banc should have been granted. Circuit Judge Smith first argued that majority opinion in Corey upheld a “protectionist regulatory scheme that threaten[ed] to Balkanize [the] national economy.” Judge M. Smith said further that the majority was impermissibly nullifying the constitutionally imposed constraints on California’s ability to discriminate against out-of-state producers of ethanol. Judge Smith’s second reason for dissenting was that the majority in Corey “sanction[ed] California’s clear attempt to project its authority into other states.” Judge Smith argued that, by allowing California’s low-carbon fuel standard to survive, the majority’s holding “stand[s] in open defiance” of controlling Supreme Court precedent and renders the dormant Commerce Clause “toothless” in the ninth circuit. Continue reading →