Your Guide to Emerging Issues in Environmental Regulation and Litigation.
As reported to our readers in August 2023, the California Supreme Court in Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. County of Monterey, (2023) Cal. LEXIS 4349, struck down a Monterey County initiative that would have banned oil and gas drilling and imposed stiff restrictions on oil and gas developments in the county. The decision brought an end …
The Environmental Protection Agency announced March 20 final national pollution standards applicable to cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty vehicles. These standards apply to vehicles manufactured beginning in 2027. The new standards will be phased in on vehicles manufactured until 2032. The EPA estimates the new standards will avoid more than 7 million tons of carbon …
Inhance Technologies is a company that has been fluorinating plastic containers using the same process since 1983. The fluorination process creates a barrier that keeps dangerous substances from leaching out of their containers, and keeps outside substances from permeating in. The U.S. EPA began investigating Inhance after the presence of perfluoroalkyls (PFAS) was detected in …
The Environmental Protection Agency on March 14 announced final amendments to the National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP) applicable to 90 large commercial sterilization facilities that use ethylene oxide (EtO), a chemical to which long-term exposure can cause cancer or other serious injury. The EtO rulemaking process has engendered some criticism – most …
Chevron is part of a group of old-school fossil-fuel companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into geothermal-energy projects aiming to use fracking-type technology to find and access underground heat — heat that might very well become the world’s most-stable source of clean power. In sufficient quantities, underground heat can be used to generate a …
The Supreme Court of New Zealand recently removed some significant roadblocks to bringing private law claims against major corporate greenhouse (GHG) emitters with a decision made in the case of Smith v. Fonterra. The decision marks what is seen as one of the first occasions where a court in common law recognized the possibility that …
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last week approved the implementation of standardized climate disclosure rules (posted here) for publicly traded companies and in public offerings. No longer can companies simply post potential risks on their websites or through emails; rather, they must now include them in official SEC filings such as annual reports and …
A new report by the International Energy Agency, released on March 13, found that for the third year in a row, methane released by the fossil fuel industry rose to an almost record high in 2023. Methane emissions are a significant contributor to global warming, second only to carbon dioxide. Although methane is better at …
Over the past seven years, our blog has reported extensively on PFAS developments, litigation, and regulations — most of which has focused on the attention surrounding potential risks associated with PFAS, and the scrutiny given to that chemical class by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Today we are providing a wrinkle seldom seen recently in the …
As part of the United States Aviation Climate Action Plan – which strives to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions for United States Aviation by 2050 – the Federal Aviation Administration announced earlier this month its final rules to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from most large aircraft in U.S. airspace. The new rules go into …