The need for effective climate action is clear. However, progress is slow and the window of opportunity to avoid the worst impacts of climate change is closing. To address the opportunity from a legal perspective, Queen’s Law brought together legal scholars from Canada and the U.S. for a December 1-2 conference titled “Institutions for Effective Climate Action: An International & Comparative Perspective.”
The main objectives of this research exchange were threefold: to generate a better understanding of how legal institutions may be contributing to lagging climate action across a range of key policy areas; to develop strategies for ways legal institutions might be better leveraged to enhance climate action; and to create community and research connections.
Abstracts:
Josh Macey
Outsourcing energy market design
A basic principle of regulation to improve grid reliability and reduce power sector emissions is that market participants alter their behavior when regulations make socially harmful activities more expensive. A carbon tax assumes that higher costs of emitting GHGs will lead market participants to reduce energy consumption and switch to less GHG-intensive resources. But this assumption often does not apply to the electricity industry, because firms can pass the costs of climate and reliability rules onto captive ratepayers. The U.S. legal system has outsourced market design to private firms that will be financially harmed if state and federal regulators pursue deep decarbonization or aggressive grid reliability efforts. Given that regulatory environment, energy market rules often counteract climate and reliability regulations. These observations underscore that structural reforms such as full corporate unbundling, market liberalization, and governance reforms are needed to make climate and reliability policies more effective and easier to administer.
Mark Winfield
A Sustainable Energy Transition for Canada - key opportunities and barriers
Within a transitions theory framework, this presentation would examine the key ideational, institutional, societal and landscape level barriers to the sustainable decarbonization of energy systems in Canada, and assess the potential drivers for a successful transition. The presentation will begin with a discussion of normative frameworks informing the concept of a 'green,' 'clean' or sustainable energy transition. It will then explore the impact of institutional factors, particularly the role of federalism in Canadian energy and climate change policy, and the roles of non-state actors and factors in the transition, including incumbent economic interests, civil society organizations, and public opion. Finally consideration will be given to shifting landscape level factors, including technological developments in the energy sector, the increasingly evident impact of a changing climate, and the impact of the War in Ukraine on Canada's energy and climate policies.
Vanessa Casado Pérez
The Hybrid in Climate Change
Climate change is a problem that requires us to employ everything but the kitchen sink. Regulatory (public) solutions are indeed essential. Market responses are too (private). The dichotomy between private and public is a well-ingrained fiction in the legal discourse. Either regulation fails and private, often market-based, solutions work or the reverse. This essay will focus on hybrid institutions, where the private and the public meet, that have been repurposed (or proposed) to deal with environmental matters and that can improve our responses in climate change adaptation and mitigation. Case studies will include: 1) "community energy" projects where citizens not only use but also own or participate in the production of clean energy, often together with a public utility and 2) common interest community governance structures, such as Homeowner Associations, as environmental regulators.
