Our Clean Energy Future

This panel will discuss recent developments in federal and state laws promoting carbon-free electricity generation in Michigan and nationwide. 

It will include siting and permitting challenges associated with new wind and solar plants and electric transmission lines, the increasing role of battery storage, environmental justice and equity issues associated with new plants in rural and post-industrial areas, tax incentives and federal funding for electricity decarbonization under the Infrastructure Investment and jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, and the impacts of EPA’s 2023 CAA Section 111 rule requiring CO2 emissions reductions from coal and gas-fired power plants.

• Sarah Mills, Associate Professor of Practice in Urban & Regional Planning, University of Michigan Taubman College of Architecture & Urban Planning (Moderator)
   
• Cale Jaffe, Professor of Law; Director, Program in Law, Communities and the Environment; Director, Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic; University of Virginia School of Law
   
• David Palchak, Manager and research engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, US Department of Energy
   
• Tony Reames, Associate Professor; Tishman Professor of Environmental Justice; Director SEAS Detroit Sustainability Clinic; University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability
   
• Pilar Thomas, Partner, Quarles & Brady LLP

This panel will discuss the role of universities and the built environment in the clean energy transition. 

Topics will include decarbonizing buildings and improving building efficiency, the role of IIJA and IRA incentives and grants, other building electrification efforts (including limits on gas-fired appliances), land use regulation and building codes, innovation efforts on university campuses, and the role of universities and local governments as laboratories for new decarbonization technologies.

• Noah Kazis, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Michigan Law School (Moderator)
   
• Andrew Berki, Director, University of Michigan Office of Campus Sustainability
   
• Brendon Slotterback, Founder and Principal, 68 Degrees Consulting
   
• Missy Stults, Sustainability and Innovations Director, City of Ann Arbor 

“Can Regulation Keep Up with the Energy Transition?”

• Allison Clements, former Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

This panel will discuss the role of the transportation sector in the clean energy transition. 

Topics may include the transition to electric vehicles, CAFE standards, new visions for urban transportation, trains and high-speed rail, California’s low carbon fuel standard, sustainable aviation fuel, job creation in the auto industry as it decarbonizes; and tax credits and grant funding from the IIJA and IRA. 

• Tifani Sadek, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law; Director, Law and Mobility Program; Co-director, Zell Entrepreneurship Clinic; University of Michigan Law School (Moderator)
   
• Yingling Fan, Associate Dean for Faculty, University of Minnesota Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
   
• Gretchen Goldman, Director of Climate Change Research and Technology at the US Department of Transportation
   
• Kristen Siemen, Vice President of Sustainable Workplaces and Chief Sustainability Officer, General Motors
   
• Kathryn Zyla, Executive Director, Georgetown Climate Center & Senior Lecturer; Georgetown Law

This panel will discuss current developments associated with carbon management technologies. 

Topics will include the role of carbon capture and sequestration and direct air capture in the clean energy transition, permitting, investment, and verification challenges with carbon management technologies, environmental impacts, rural and urban tensions, the role of carbon offsets and trading, and environmental justice implications.

• Jennifer Haverkamp, Professor from Practice, University of Michigan Law School; Graham Family Director, University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Institute (Moderator)
   
• Vilas Annavarapu, Environmental Justice Fellow, Great Plains Institute
   
• Brian Ellis, Associate Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering, University of Michigan College of Engineering
   
• Jennifer Wilcox, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy,  University of Pennsylvania, former Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the U.S. Department of Energy
   
• Hannah Wiseman, Professor of Law, Professor and Wilson Faculty Fellow in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, and Institutes of Energy and the Environment Co-funded Faculty Member; Penn State University