Each week, I review the papers, studies, reports, and briefings posted over at the RFF Library Blog.
The Transfer of Public Lands Movement: Taking the ‘Public’ Out of Public Lands
[AP] Utah’s push to wrest control of 31 million acres of federally controlled land would lead to less public access, less public involvement in land-use decisions and more drilling and strip mining, according to a new report by legal scholars. - via Wallace Stegner Center for Land, Resources & the Environment, S.J. Quinney College of Law,University of Utah / by Robert B. Keiter and John Ruple
Clean Power Plan Flexibility Means States Have Many Paths Toward Compliance: White Paper
Veteran air quality regulators at the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) see significant opportunity for states to bring new approaches to air quality planning due to the unusual flexibility allowed under Section 111(d) of the Clean Air Act—the law underpinning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan. In a new policy brief, It’s Not a SIP: Opportunities and Implications for State 111(d) Compliance Planning, RAP finds that states are not confined to the prescriptive federal requirements generally associated with state implementation plans (SIPs) under the Clean Air Act. Instead, states can craft their compliance plans based on state policy, and can even tailor their plans to achieve compliance more cost-effectively, meet other state public policy goals, and boost state employment and economic gains—as long as the plan meets EPA’s established greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets… - via Regulatory Assistance Project
Final EPA Report on Oil and Gas Drilling and Earthquakes
[From an Energy Wire article by Michael Soraghan, sub. req’d] U.S. EPA has issued its final report on man-made earthquakes related to oil and gas drilling activities after 3½ years. - via Distribution of Final Work Product from the National Underground Injection Control (UIC) Technical Workgroup: Minimizing and Managing Potential Impacts of Injection-Induced Seismicity from Class II Disposals: Practical Approaches
Quantifying the Impact of Climate Change on Extreme Heat in Australia
[Washington Post] …the Australian summer of 2012-2013 provided a terrifying preview of a world under climate change. According to the country’s Bureau of Meteorology, a devastating heat wave in late 2012-early 2013 saw “records set in every State and Territory… - via Climate Council
Natural Gas Infrastructure Implications of Increased Demand from the Electric Power Sector
This report examines the potential infrastructure needs of the U.S. interstate natural gas pipeline transmission system across a range of future natural gas demand scenarios that drive increased electric power sector natural gas use. To perform this analysis, the U.S. Department of Energy commissioned Deloitte MarketPoint to examine scenarios in its North American Integrated Model (NAIM), which simultaneously models the electric power and the natural gas sectors. This study concludes that, under scenarios in which natural gas demand from the electric power sector increases, the incremental increase in interstate natural gas pipeline expansion is modest, relative to historical capacity additions. Similarly, capital expenditures on new interstate pipelines in the scenarios considered here are projected to be significantly less than the capital expenditures associated with infrastructure expansion over the last 15 years. - via Deloitte MarketPoint for the US Dept. of Energy
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