Anyone paying even a bit of attention to climate solutions knows that we’ve seen in recent years tremendous development of wind and solar power generation. Most people also understand that that development needs to continue, along with deployment of other carbon-free power sources.

But in order for the clean energy transition to succeed, we also need to make ambitious improvements to America’s transmission grid. The transmission system is a vast, intricate, nationwide machine that most of us take for granted. Most people don’t fully understand all the things it does, why it’s so important, or how is needs to evolve.

My guest today, is Rob Gramlich. He’s the founder and President of a Washington-DC-based consultancy called Grid Strategies. You’d be hard pressed to find someone more knowledgeable than he is about the challenges and opportunities of grid improvement. He frequently testifies before Congress, the Federal energy regulatory commission, and state agencies, and he’s widely respected by key decisionmakers across the political spectrum. Rob has founded a number of important organizations, including Americans for a Clean Energy Grid. Before founding Grid Strategies, he also held important roles at the American Wind Energy Association, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and elsewhere.

I sat down with Rob to better understand why improvements to the transmission system are essential for the success of the renewable energy transition. I was curious what needs to be improved to make the grid function as it needs to. I wanted to hear what obstacles are impeding these improvements, and where there may be opportunities—even in the current political environment—for meaningful progress on this complex and crucial aspect of the climate problem.

Other resources:

• Grid Strategies, LLC
• Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
• Abundance, by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson

In the last episode of this show, I had the privilege of talking with Elizabeth Burch and Adam Orford, two law professors from University of Georgia. They helped me to better understand many of the types of climate lawsuits that have proliferated in recent years.

But there are so many varieties of climate litigation that there’s a whole other category we barely touched on, which has special relevance to the nexus of climate and finance. I’m talking about shareholder lawsuits brought under corporate or securities law. As before, I wanted to talk with an expert insider, but someone who has more objectivity and a broader perspective than a lawyer immersed in pending cases. 

My guest today is Emily Strauss. She’s a law professor at UC Law San Francisco. That’s the University of California law school that was formerly known as UC Hastings. She’s an expert in corporate law and securities and financial regulation, and some of her recent scholarly research spcifically explores patterns in climate-related shareholder litigation. I sat down with Emily to learn more about how these lawsuits relate to other types of climate-related shareholder advocacy and other types of climate lawsuits. I wanted to know what opportunities shareholder litigation might create to push corporations toward action on climate, and what limitations they may have as a tool for advancing environmental or social goals. 

Additional resources:

• Climate Change and Shareholder Lawsuits (academic paper by Emily Strauss)
• Is Everything Securities Fraud? (academic paper by Emily Strauss)
• Climate Change Litigation Databases (Columbia Law School, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law)

In recent years, as climate change has gained attention, there's been a proliferation of climate related lawsuits. They're based on a wide variety of legal theories. Some are brought under federal statutes like the Clean Air Act, others are brought under state statutes. Still others rely on common law, which is so old that it predates the widespread use of fossil fuels. Some of these lawsuits seem mainly symbolic. Others have been brought by state and local governments—inspired by the multibillion dollar tobacco litigation of the 1990s—seeking to hold fossil fuel companies liable for astronomical financial damages.

The Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University maintains a public database that tracks climate related litigation. The center reports 97 climate related cases filed just in the first 10 months of 2023, with well over 100 filed each year since 2017. And that's for the U.S. alone.

To better understand all this, I thought about talking with some of the attorneys bringing or defending these lawsuits. But it seemed like a better idea to talk to experts with a more objective viewpoint than an attorney involved directly in a case. I also wanted to understand better where these climate change cases fit into the bigger picture of environmental law. I wanted to learn how they relate more broadly to the use of litigation to bring about change on major societal issues like opioids, or toxic waste or the spread of disinformation.

Today I'm joined by two law professors from the University of Georgia School of Law. Elizabeth Chamblee Burch is an expert in complex civil lawsuits. Among her many publications on related subjects, she wrote a book in 2019, called Mass Tort Deals: Backroom Bargaining in Multidistrict Litigation. Adam Orford’s expertise is in environmental and climate change law and the energy transition. He's litigated complex environmental and energy cases in private practice. And besides his law degree, he has a Ph.D. in energy and resources. 

Other resources:

• Climate Change Litigation Databases (Columbia Law School, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law)
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway