Environmental Policy & Law

As a teenager, Eric Washburn immersed himself in books about ecology. Home-schooled for a year on a ranch in Colorado's Yampa River Valley, the future aide to two Senate Democratic leaders shot thousands of photographs of local wildlife. "I think that was the most formative year of my life," said Washburn, who just joined the Policy Resolution Group at Bracewell & Giuliani. "It was that Colorado experience that instilled in me that love of nature."

The Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at the West Virginia University College of Law will be analyzing the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan to cut carbon pollution from power plants. Teaming up with Downstream Strategies, a Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm, the Center will be working on a project titled “Carbon Dioxide Emission Reduction Opportunities for the West Virginia Power Sector.” They will explore the various strategies available to West Virginia to comply with the EPA’s Clean Power Plan Proposed Rule. ...

One of the ways our Fellows lead is by providing expert testimony before state and national legislative bodies. In March, Mike Wilson and Evan Hansen were called to testify before the U.S.

The federal clean-energy loan guarantee program that gave you Solyndra wasn’t just a multibillion-dollar political debacle – it also didn’t create jobs, didn’t reduce carbon emissions and ran up financial risk for taxpayers. And yet, the program wasn’t enough of a bust to outweigh the job-creation and emissions-reducing successes of the complete $90 billion “green stimulus” the Obama administration built into the $800 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act four years ago, as the country was plunging deeper into recession.