CleanLaw

In this episode Joe Goffman speaks with Sam Ricketts, senior fellow for Energy and Environment at the Center for American Progress and former climate director for the presidential campaign of Govrnor Jay Inslee. He now also serves as a co-founder of Evergreen, an organization created by Inslee campaign alumni to continue to deploy the policy, communications, and organizing tools of a political cam...

Hana Vizcarra speaks with Kevin McClean, former Associate General Counsel for EPA’s Pesticides and Toxic Substances Law Office, about chemical substances regulation and implementation of the 2016 revisions to the Toxic Substances Control Act. Transcript here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-45-Hana-and-Kevin-McLean-TSCA-Lautenberg.pdf Kevin's paper on TSCA after the...

Recorded on May 7, Joe Goffman speaks with Cynthia Giles, former Assistant Administrator for EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance, about EPA’s rollback of environmental enforcement in a COVID-19 enforcement discretion policy issued at the end of March 2020. This issue is still playing out: three lawsuits are pending about the March enforcement policy, and EPA has given some additio...

In this episode Ari Peskoe speaks with Leah Stokes, Professor of Political Science at UC Santa Barbara about state clean energy policies. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-43-Ari-and-Leah-Stokes-on-Interest-Groups-and-Utilities.pdf

Ari Peskoe, Director of our Electricity Law Initiative, describes a petition filed at FERC by a group calling itself the New England Ratepayers Association requesting that FERC find state-regulated net metering arrangements violate federal law and are therefore invalid. If FERC were to grant NERA’s petition, utilities across the country would likely press state regulators to change the rules that...

Caitlin McCoy is joined by Bethany Davis Noll, Litigation Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School. They discuss the recently-finalized Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule, which weakens fuel economy and GHG standards for cars and light trucks. They share some insights into the rule and how it could be challenged. A transcript of this episode is av...

In this episode Alex Griswold, a research associate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, interviews Professor Jody Freeman, our founding director and also an independent director of ConocoPhillips. They talk about the Trump-era environmental rollbacks that are most troubling to Jody, and why she is still optimistic that we can do better. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-...

Joe Goffman interviews Harvard Law Professor Richard Lazarus about his new book, "The Rule of Five," which describes the drama, strategy, cast of characters, and, above all, the lawyering, by both the litigators and the Justices, that led to the seminal Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/39-Goffman-Lazarus-Transcript.p...

For a transcript of this episode see here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/38-Goffman-Bloomer-Transcript.pdf EELP Fellow Laura Bloomer speaks with our Executive Director Joe Goffman about how the Trump Administration is using regulatory rollbacks to advance new interpretations of the Clean Air Act that restrict EPA’s authority to address climate change and threaten the agenc...

Transcript of this episode https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Hana-and-Alice-Hill-Transcript-Final-1.pdf Hana Vizcarra talks with Alice Hill, senior fellow for climate change policy at the Council on Foreign Relations. A former judge and federal prosecutor, Judge Hill served as a special assistant to President Barack Obama and senior director for resilience policy on the Natio...

Transcript of this episode here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ari-and-Joe-FERC-Transcript-Final-1.pdf In this episode our executive director Joe Goffman interviews Electricity Law Initiative director Ari Peskoe about the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's December, 2019 order on PJM’s capacity auction. Ari's recent op-ed on this rule https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-co...

For a full transcript of this episode click here http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Ari-and-Jason-Burwen-Transcript-Final.pdf Ari Peskoe talks with Jason Burwen, vice president for policy at the US Energy Storage Association. They discuss new electricity market rules that aim to pay storage resources for the value they provide to our energy system. https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/2020/01/...

See here for a transcript of this episode. http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Alex-Barron-and-Joe-Transcription.pdf Our executive director Joe Goffman speaks with Smith College Professor of Environmental Science and Policy Alex Barron. Alex is a former senior official in EPA’s policy office and discusses his work with economists and other experts to understand the strengths and weaknes...

For a full transcript of this recording please click here http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Samantha-Ross-and-Hana-Transcript.pdf In this episode our staff attorney Hana Vizcarra talks with Samantha Ross, former Chief of Staff and Special Counsel at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and former Special Counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission. They discuss the impo...

In this episode our EELP Legal Fellow Laura Bloomer speaks with Gretchen Goldman, Research Director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the Trump administration’s changes to EPA’s process for reviewing the national ambient air quality standards, or NAAQS. They discuss the importance of revising these standards to keep pace with current science, and...

Hana Vizcarra speaks with Erik Landry, SM ’18 and research associate in the MIT Office of the Vice President for Research. They talk about energy companies’ use of scenarios in climate-related financial disclosure and discuss his new white paper. "In 2017, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), established by the G20 Financial Stability Board, provided a guiding framework...

In this episode, Caitlin and Joe talk about their white paper on the Repeal of the Clean Power Plan and the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. They also discuss the litigation challenging the repeal and new rule, with updates including petitioners’ motion to hold the case in abeyance pending EPA's issuing the final New Source Review rule, which was initially included in the ACE proposal. The other pape...

Hana Vizcarra talks with Jesse Keenan, a social scientist and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School in Science, Technology and Public Policy. They discuss climate-related data, financing community development to encourage adaptation, and recent work about what drives coastal adaptation decisions that communities make. Jesse has several recent papers on th...

In this episode Joe speaks with climate economist Gernot Wagner about his latest paper (with co-authors) showing how climate-economic modeling can account not only for predicted damages linked to climate change but also for the uncertainty and risk associated with climate change. Gernot also talks about his work with the late Martin Weitzman, one of the most influential climate and environmental e...

In this episode Joe Goffman, our Executive Director, talks with Kathy Fallon Lambert, Senior Advisor with The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Co-founder of the Science Policy Exchange. Kathy was part of a team of researchers who evaluated the Regulatory Impact Analysis for EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, to determine w...

In this episode our executive director Joe Goffman speaks again with Clean Air Task Force senior counsel Jonathan Lewis about biofuels. They discuss the 5 lessons policy-makers seeking to promote innovation can learn from the failure of the renewable fuel standard as a policy, why aviation is a critical transportation market to target for emissions reductions, and the low carbon fuel standards of...

In this episode Joe Goffman, our Executive Director, talks with our Climate, Clean Air and Energy Fellow Caitlin McCoy about part one of the clean car rule rollback. They discuss EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s final rule, issued on September 19th, that preempts California’s greenhouse gas standards and withdraws California’s Clean Air Act waiver. Transcript available...

In this episode of CleanLaw Joe Goffman speaks with Clean Air Task Force senior counsel Jonathan Lewis about bioenergy. They discuss the history of biofuel mandates, the challenges of lifecycle analysis, the problems associated with land-use, the difficulty in meeting annual mandates, and talk about what US biofuel policy should really be focused on. At around the 30-minute mark the conversation m...

Robin and Hana talk about the legal landscape of offshore drilling, and the proposed rule changes and executive orders that may affect where and how oil companies operate. Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-23-Robin-Hana-Offshore-Drilling.pdf

Ari Peskoe talks to Matt Christiansen, legal advisor to FERC Commissioner Richard Glick, about the Federal Power Act and Matt’s recent article co-authored with Commissioner Glick about FERC and climate change. Ari and Matt discuss recent federal court decisions about Zero Emission Credits (ZECs) and what they mean for the future of state electricity policies. Then, Matt outlines his article and ex...