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• Circuit Court of Appeals calling on federal officials to halt a project that could be detrimental to a coral reef system off Puerto Rico's coast.
• The proposed project coincides with catastrophic events like coral bleaching, brought on by pollution and a warming climate.
• The scientists brought the amicus brief with community-based environmental groups in Puerto Rico who oppose the project.
• Based on Stetson Law's campus in Gulfport, Fla., the Jacobs Law Clinic pursues and defends justice through advocacy focused on pressing environmental issues.

• On May 11, 2023, the Biden administration proposed new regulations to curb carbon pollution from existing power plants.
• The new rules replace the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which was proposed in 2015 but ran into multiple legal challenges and never took effect.
• Nonetheless, in a high-profile 2022 ruling, West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court found that the Obama administration’s approach exceeded the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate power plant carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act.

1. How has the Biden administration tailored these regulations in response to the West Virginia v. EPA ruling?

• The scent of West Virginia v. EPA is all over the new proposed rules.
• The new proposed regulations attempt to thread the needle between meeting the Biden administration’s climate commitments and avoiding another gutting in court.
• The EPA proposes to use CCS to reduce emissions from large coal plants with long life expectancies.

2. Do the draft rules indicate that EPA is responding to energy industry critiques of the Clean Power Plan?

• The proposal takes a tiered and staggered approach to which power plants will be regulated, how stringently, and by when.
• First, the EPA goes out of its way to accommodate coal plants that are already scheduled to close or anticipate shutting down in the next couple of decades.
• Second, the rule’s reliance on carbon capture and storage, in my view, ought to be music to fossil fuel companies’ ears.

3. Do you see legal vulnerabilities in the proposed new rules?

• CCS is an emerging technology that’s not yet widely used, in part because it is so expensive.
• Rather, they will be required to reduce their emissions to a level that could be achieved using CCS.
• This is not a topic that the EPA wants to revisit with the Supreme Court.

4. How do these regulations conform with Biden’s focus on environmental justice?

• And they disproportionately harm the health of nearby low-income communities and communities of color.
• Carbon capture and storage doesn’t reduce these pollutants at any significant scale, nor does it prevent public health, environmental and cultural damage caused by fossil fuel extraction projects.

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• Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP recently welcomed back Paul R. McIntyre to its Environmental Practice in the firm's Philadelphia office.
• PHILADELPHIA, Jan. 26, 2023 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP recently welcomed back Paul R. McIntyre to its Environmental Practice in the firm's Philadelphia office .
• McIntyre returns to Greenberg Traurig after nearly 10 years, along with Michael P. Canavan , who will join the firm as of counsel.
• "I am thrilled that Paul decided to return home to Greenberg Traurig, now as an even more deeply experienced leader in environmental transactions in the real estate and private equity space," said Curtis B.