Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #38 – Caroline Cecot

In this Thursday’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode, I talk with Caroline Cecot of GMU’s Scalia Law School about her research on “Regulating the Risks of Fracking to Water.”

Caroline describes her empirical research on how New York towns approached fracking in the years before it was banned across the State. She finds that towns that were more vulnerable to water pollution and those that were less accustomed to oil and gas development were more likely to ban fracking. As a result, she argues that fracking might win more widespread support if better water contamination regulation could assure local communities of its safety. She also describes some of her ideas for improving insurance and regulation of fracking risks to water.

The discussion builds on two of Caroline’s recent articles: “Regulatory Fracture Plugging: Managing Risks to Water from Shale Development,” which was published in the Texas A&M Law Review in 2018, and “No Fracking Way: An Empirical Investigation of Local Shale Development Bans in New York,”which was published in Environmental Law in 2019.

The Energy Tradeoffs Podcast can be found at the following links: 
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Energy Tradeoffs Podcast #32 – Rossi & Serkin

This Thursday’s EnergyTradeoffs.com podcast episode features features the University of Texas’s David Spence interviewing Vanderbilt Law School’s Jim Rossi and Chris Serkin about their proposal for “Energy Exactions“.

Jim and Chris describe this proposal, which would have local governments impose “a fee on development … that is designed to avoid strains on the energy grid.” It would build on existing negotiations between developers and local governments that often require developers to pay for some of the local services they will require. To comply with an energy exaction, a developer could either pay for the new burden it would place on the energy grid or even pay for energy-saving technologies that would eliminate this burden.

This discussion explores Jim and Chris’s recent paper, which was published in the Cornell Law Review and is also titled “Energy Exactions“.

The Energy Tradeoffs Podcast can be found at the following links: 
Apple | Google