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Open Access Publications from the University of California

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The UCLA Journal of Environmental Law and Policy produces a high quality biannual journal on cutting-edge environmental legal and policy matters.  JELP is entirely run and produced by students at UCLA School of Law.  Articles in JELP are written by leading scholars throughout the country and often the world, and by students focusing on environmental law at UCLA.

Volume 43, Issue 1, 2025

Issue cover

Articles

An Economic Case Against Uneconomic Coal: Antitrust Concerns in the Deregulated and Competitive Electricity Market

This Article addresses uneconomic self-commitment in the electric power market with an eye to the antitrust case against the uneconomic operations of coal-fired power plants. Part I describes the history of electricity market regulation, deregulation, and the problem caused by vertically integrated utilities relying on uneconomic coal resources. Part II addresses the interplay of antitrust, anticompetition, and anti-manipulation laws on the energy industry and electricity market. Ultimately, antitrust doctrine's entrenchment in the industry's prior age presents a challenge to what is a billion-dollar problem and this Article attempts to challenge that entrenchment.

Nature in the Balance: The Post COP-15 Pathway to Achieve a Sustainable Global Economy

Nature is being lost at an unprecedented rate and time is running out to stop it. Despite the systemic financial and human risks posed by nature loss, little attention is paid to addressing its root cause—the unsustainability of the global economy. However, at COP15, states agreed to the Global Biodiversity Framework, which signaled growing recognition of the need to transition to a sustainable global economic system. This Article first examines why the current global economic system is unsustainable and what is the definition of the sustainable economy. The Article then nproceeds to determine how states can achieve this transition, looking at the policy roadmap that has emerged at both the international and domestic levels since COP15.

Student Comments

Reinforcing Community Climate Resilience through Social Cohesion: Opportunities for Local Governments in Southern California

This paper aims to identify how local governments may strengthen climate resilience by supporting bottom-up social cohesion within communities themselves. Social cohesion may be broadly characterized as a society's willingness to cooperate to achieve the shared well-being of all its members. Despite having particularly good outcomes in low-income communities, social cohesion has often been overlooked as an adaptive climate resilience tool. Without effetive safeguards in place to protect long-term social cohesion, climate impacts will only diminish communities' ability to build social cohesion in the first place. Through community-based legal and policy mechanisms that address existing social economic problems, local governments can enshrine social cohesion frameworks as an adaptive resiliency tool for use against imminent climate impacts.

First, this paper will introduce social cohesion as a concept and the different dimensions through which it has been analyzed. Next, it will discuss the relationship between social cohesion, resilience, and climate change's amplification of barriers to buildign these tools—particularly in low-income and marginalized communities. Then, this paper will provide an overview of a few legal and policy approached and recommendations that have been in areas throughout the United States to support communicty social cohesion in light of climate threats. Finally, these principles will be applied to the context of current adaptation efforts in Southern California, concluding with recommendations for local governments to facilitate more robust forms of social cohesion in building climate resilience.

Watt's in the Wind? A Comparative Analysis of Legal Currents in Offshore Wind Between China and the United States

This research paper compares offshore wind energy policies between the United States and China by highlighting the differences between their development trajectories. Offshore wind energy is undoubtedly a crucial component of the global transition towards renewable energy. So far, it has seen varying levels of success across different jurisdictions, with China significantly outpacing both the United States and the European nations which pioneered it. China's both rapid and efficient deployment of offshore wind capacity should be attributed to its centralized government approach; its strategy includes streamlined regulatory frameworks, notable financial incentives, and strong government support policies, among other initiatives. These measures have enabled China to both meet and exceed its ambitious renewable energy targets.

In contrast, despite recent efforts by the latest American presidential administration, development of the United States' offshore wind industry has been severely hampered by fragmented regulatory authorities. These institutions have implemented various bureaucratic obstacles, which ultimately results in a relative lack of aggressive legislative action to foster growth in the domestic American offshore wind sector.

This analysis delves into specific legal and regulatory frameworks that have shaped the offshore wind landscapes in both countries. It examines the roles of federal and state policies, financial incentives, regulatory decrees, as well as challenges posed by legal and jurisdictional complexitites in the United States, juxtaposed against China's cohesive and supportive policy environment. Through such a comparison, this paper argues for a more centralized and streamlined approach in the United States by drawing lessons from China's extremely effective model of offshore wind development. It then concludes with recommendations regarding policy and legal enhancements which could significantly improve American offshore wind industry prospects.