State Siting of Renewable Energy – Preemptive Power Grab or Power Play?
Sarah Everhart
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The United States needs more—and cleaner—energy. Experts project that in the near future, the United States will need to significantly increase its electricity generation. Currently, the burning of fossil fuels remains a significant source of power generation in the United States. However, these fossil fuels produce greenhouse gases that are one of the main drivers of the impending and likely disastrous, climate change. Therefore, it has never been more vital to decarbonize the energy sector. However, there are two significant impediments to the deployment of renewable energy: restrictive local siting laws and community opposition.
According to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, at least 459 counties and municipalities across 44 states have severe local restrictions on siting renewable energy projects. In response to the proliferation of restrictions, several states have passed siting reform bills to bypass local restrictions and authorize state-level siting of renewable energy projects. Although many siting reform frameworks aim to streamline permitting and support community engagement, opponents of siting reforms that expand states’ siting authority argue that they constitute an improper appropriation of local land-use authority. This Article will examine this policy tension and whether these siting reform bills strike a balance that allows for community involvement while ensuring a transition to cleaner energy sources.
This Article will also examine opposition to state-level siting by analyzing the specific example of the agricultural sector, which is divided on this issue and is directly impacted by siting decisions. Farmers who support siting reforms desire a streamlined system to facilitate the leasing of farmland for renewable energy generation. Farmers who oppose siting reforms argue that siting should remain a local issue, fearing that state-level siting will enable the conversion of prime farmland and unduly burden rural communities.
As the time to take adaptive action to prevent the most severe impacts of climate change approaches, this Article examines whether siting reforms are an improper preemptive power grab of land-use control or a strategic power play to protect the public from a climate catastrophe.
Offshore Wind in Vertically-Integrated Versus Deregulated Models: Considerations for State Policymakers
Caroline Daniel
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Energy law scholars and economists have long studied the theoretical differences between vertically-integrated and deregulated models of electricity regulation. Now, diverse regulatory approaches and advances in renewable electricity technology present the opportunity to go beyond the abstract. This case study applies tenets of energy law and economic theory to offshore wind initiatives to concretize lessons of a clean energy transition for state policymakers going forward.
By comparing Virginia’s and New York’s offshore wind ventures, this analysis lends nuance and practicality to otherwise abstract energy regulation principles. These states are leaders in the volatile offshore wind industry, a target for the second Trump administration. Their projects pursue similar goals by similar means; however, while Virginia has embraced a traditional monopolistic system of electricity regulation, New York has turned towards competition. This comparison identifies the tradeoffs between these two regulatory models as applied to high-risk, high-capital technologies like offshore wind—which may be critical tools for decarbonization. It urges state policymakers to examine the costs and benefits of these models and to align their energy goals with the appropriate regulatory model for best results.
The federal government’s hostility towards renewable energy transition and offshore wind in particular leaves states in a newfound position of opportunity and responsibility. The present administration has created an incredibly challenging environment for clean energy innovation and transition, yet the importance of accelerating energy transition is as apparent as it has ever been. Thus, it is more critical than ever that state policymakers capitalize on existing lessons of energy transition, rather than repeating past mistakes.
Environmental Law’s Missing Piece: The Right to Nature
Ori Sharon
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For decades, environmental law has been trapped in a binary value system: it either treats nature instrumentally, as property to be used for human benefit, or views it as intrinsically valuable, deserving protection for its own sake. Both approaches, though ethically powerful, have struggled to deliver consistent and enforceable protections. As ecological crises deepen, this conceptual stalemate is no longer just inadequate—it is dangerous.
This article argues that environmental law remains structurally incomplete. It has overlooked a third category of value—relational value—long recognized in ethics and conservation science but largely absent from legal doctrine. Relational values arise from the lived, identity-shaping relationships people form with land, species, and ecosystems—bonds of belonging, care, and interdependence that are essential to both human flourishing and ecological resilience.
By ignoring these values, the law has failed to account for the most immediate and meaningful ways people experience and respond to environmental harm. This article introduces the Right to Nature—a legal framework that embeds these relationships into existing legal systems. By grounding environmental protection in the interdependence of people and place, this approach offers a coherent, enforceable, and normatively compelling foundation for environmental governance—one that reflects how people actually live with, depend on, and care for the natural world.