Sustainable Energy Law Notebook

Three regulations and two directives implementing the third energy liberalization package were published in the EU Official Journal on 14 August 2009 (L 211). These are: Regulation (EC) No. 713/2009 of 13 July 2009 establishing an Agency for the Cooperation of Energy Regulators; Regulation (EC) No. 714/2009 on conditions for access to the network for cross-border exchanges in electricity (repealing Regulation (EC) No. 1228/2003); Regulation (EC) No. 715/2009 on conditions for access to the natural gas transmission networks (repealing Regulation (EC) No. 1775/2005); Directive 2009/72/EC of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in electricity (repealing Directive 2003/54/EC); Directive 2009/73/EC of 13 July 2009 concerning common rules for the internal market in natural gas (repealing Directive 2003/55/EC). I will comment the main changes brought by these texts in a comming message.

After some time dedicated to traveling back from the U.S., teaching, lecturing, writing, etc., the SEL Notebook is now continuing its activities, at the rythm of one or two publications (at least) by week. The most recent energy and legal developments will as before influence my agenda, always with a comparative eye. I look forward to your reactions and comments. Bonne lecture!

After discussing in a previous message the prospects of offshore drilling along the U.S. coasts, I wanted to explore the problematic of offshore wind power development and understand the current barriers to its take-off in the U.S. A good start was Cape Wind by W. Williams and R. Whitcomb which tells the story of "America's first offshore wind mills." (See Cape Wind project website) The book opens on a 2001 public hearing meeting hold on a proposal to build a large electrical-generation project in the so-called "Nantucket Sound" area (Massachusetts, 150 km south Boston). The project is promoted by the company Cape Wind Associates and aims to install wind turbines along the coast of "Cape Cod," the elected area of the American east coast elite. Chapter 1 introduces some key characters: historian David McCullough, one of the strongest opponents to the project (but relatively absent in the rest of the book), and Jim Gordon, president of Cape Wind Associa...

The Natural Resources Committee of the House of Representatives started on February 11 the first of a series of three hearings on the U.S. offshore oil and gas drilling policy. I summarise hereafter the main elements of the current discussion. Why a ban on offshore drilling? The background for the current discussions is the end of two bans on offshore drilling in most of the U.S. waters. The bans consist of: (1) a presidential ban adopted by President George Bush Senior in 1989, in reaction to the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, and lifted by his son G.W. Bush in July 2008; (2) a Congressional ban from 1981, under the form of a moratorium, renewable each September, and which expired in September 2008. These bans restricted areas that could be offered by the Minerals Management Service (MMS) for outer continental shelf (OCS) leasing. The remaining restrictions concern: the “Presidential Withdrawal”, which excludes all marine sanctuaries from oil and gas leasing activities;...

I would like to report here on a seminar I attended this week on the topic in title, at UC Berkeley Law School, where Prof. Oona Hathaway presented brillantly her views. She classifies challenges into three categories: framing, structure and substance. I reproduce hereafter my notes from her presentation. 1. Framing, answering shortcomings of previous administration and attacks. Several U.S. politicians expressed strong criticisms against the international institutions, and in particular the United Nations (U.N.)system and the necessity the defend the country sovereignty. Prof. Hathaway quoted among others Congressman Ron Paul or Pat Buchanan (the latter having said that UNCLOS "represents a permenant loss of national sovereingty"). The previous decades saw the withdrawal of the U.S. from several international treaties, and a switch in public opinion regarding the U.S. role in international politics. Only 35 % of the world population see the U.S. as an important international...

… in a declaration to read on the Energy Charter website, here .

For those not familiar with the Superbowl, one of the side entertainment to the sport event is the competition for getting the best TV-ad (at the most dramatic moment of course). And it was with interest that we could watch this year a General Electric advertisement featuring smart grid technologies (on the song "If I only had a brain" from the Wizard of Oz). Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1XqLPa9BoA I will shortly comment on some aspects of the smart grid in a latter message. But to introduce the theme, "smart grid" technologies aim, among other things, to manage energy more efficienctly in particular at the consumption level, increase energy storage capacity (such as in the transport sector), work on transmission and distribution systems, develop large-scale integration of renewable energy.