On October 29, 2018, Emmett Institute faculty submitted a comment letter in support of California Air Resources Board’s proposed Tropical Forest Standard. The authors conclude that approving the standard presents an opportunity for CARB to lead the world in tropical forest protection and conservation. Tropical forest protection is an indispensable strategy for fighting climate change, protecting public health, preserving biodiversity, and protecting and enhancing the livelihoods of forest-dependent peoples.
On October 25, 2018, Emmett Institute faculty members Julia Stein, Ann Carlson, Cara Horowitz, Sean Hecht, and Meredith Hankins submitted comments on the proposed Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule for Model Years 2012-2026 Passenger Cars and Light Trucks.
On behalf of 68 environmental and administrative law professors affiliated with 47 universities around the country, UCLA Emmett Institute faculty members Sean Hecht and Julia Stein filed a comment letter urging EPA's Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler to withdraw the "Strengthening Transparency in Science" proposed rule.
To address the challenges and policy solutions to achieve zero-emission freight at the Southern California ports, UCLA Law’s Emmett Institute on Climate and Environment and Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) hosted a conference at UCLA on June 8, 2018, Toward Zero-Emission Freight at Southern California’s Ports, sponsored by Bank of America. The speakers included leading representatives from vehicle manufacturers, the ports, state and local government, nonprofit advocates, and community groups.
California's Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS) is an ambitious, innovative, and controversial policy that controls greenhouse-gas emissions associated with transport fuels – a large emissions source mostly neglected by prior climate policies, with unique technical challenges of uncertainty, long time-horizons, and network effects, that hinder its response to economy-wide emissions-pricing policies. The LCFS was introduced in 2011 as one measure to pursue the goal of California's landmark 2006 climate law, returning emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.
On May 31, 2018, Ann Carlson, Cara Horowitz, Sean Hecht and Meredith Hankins of UCLA Law School's Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment submitted a comment letter to the California Air Resources Board in response to their request for public input on possible amendments to the state's greenhouse gas vehicle emission regulations. The comment letter supports action by CARB to maintain the current stringency of California's vehicle emission program in the face of attempted weakening at the federal level.
On May 24, 2018, Ann Carlson testified before the California State Legislature's Joint Legislative Committee on Climate Change Policies. Carlson's testimony discussed how the committee might exercise oversight over the question of the potential overallocation of allowances in California's cap-and-trade program. Carlson identifies several goals of the cap-and-trade program and suggests that any solution to the overallocation problem may involve tradeoffs among these objectives.
This paper, the seventh paper in the Emmett Institute’s Pritzker Brief series, focuses on Assembly Bill 2516, an innovative new law that requires California to develop an online database of actions taken by state agencies and selected other entities to plan for sea level rise.
On April 25, 2018, Cara Horowitz, Nat Logar, & Ann Carlson of UCLA Law School’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, together with William Boyd of University of Colorado Law School, submitted a comment letter to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency with and on behalf of five electric grid experts: Benjamin F. Hobbs, Brendan Kirby, Kenneth J. Lutz, James D. McCalley, and Brian Parsons. The comment letter opposes EPA’s proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from existing fossil-fuel-fired electric generating units.
In 2013, University of California President Janet Napolitano announced one of the most ambitious environmental programs in the country, the Carbon Neutrality Initiative. The CNI sets a goal to reach net zero carbon emissions from the system’s 10 campuses by 2025.