This second edition book is the latest version of the nation’s first hardcover casebook devoted to renewable energy law and policy—a captivating and rapidly-expanding area of legal practice. It provides detailed and accessible introductions to a diverse array of legal issues associated with renewable energy development, ranging from wind rights to solar access protection to geothermal resource rights. The book also features detailed coverage of numerous policy questions that continue to impact the renewable energy sector, including those related to solar net metering, the visual impacts of wind farms, and the effects of renewable energy development on wildlife habitats and cultural resources. In addition to its dozens of excerpted cases, statutes, and journal articles, the book includes a simplified wind energy lease and realistic samples of other types of documentation that transactional lawyers are likely to encounter when representing renewable energy developers. With more than 200 answerable questions and several extensive Policy Problems and Practical Skills Exercises, the book is ideal for law school classroom use. Its unique and exhaustive coverage of a broad range of topics likewise makes it a valuable resource for anyone interested in the legal and policy matters that surround the nation’s burgeoning renewable energy industry.


Imprint: West Academic Publishing
Series: American Casebook Series
Publication Date: 10/11/2021

Troy A. Rule, Arizona State University College of Law

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This second edition of Renewable Energy: Law, Policy and Practice features substantial revisions and updates from the casebook’s first edition that reflect five years of rapid advancements in the renewable energy industry and its governance structures. Few areas of law and policy are evolving more quickly than renewable energy law. Mounting climate change concerns and unprecedented technological innovation continue to drive an historic reshaping of the energy sector that introduces countless new legal and policy questions. The legal academic discourse surrounding the energy sector is also steadily evolving, with increased attention on justice ideals and on demand-side energy management strategies. This new edition incorporates numerous changes aimed at ensuring that students who study from it are fully up to date in their understanding of modern renewable energy law. Updates include:

  • Expanded new coverage of core legal and policy issues related to coal, oil, natural, gas, and nuclear power designed to make the book even better suited to serve as the assigned casebook for conventional Energy Law courses;
  • Newly-excerpted materials focused on energy justice, environmental justice, climate justice, and energy democracy principles;
  • Revisions that reflect recent changes to the federal Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credit programs and to federal bonus tax depreciation rules for renewable energy projects;
  • Excerpts from a new Kansas Supreme Court case, Matter of Westar Energy, Inc. (2020), analyzing arguments against a utility’s proposal to impose new demand charges on residential solar energy users in that state;
  • Additional coverage of offshore wind energy policy questions, including newly-added excerpts from a recent law review article focused on those issues;
  • Expanded materials covering policy debates related to “community solar” projects;
  • Portions of a 2019 Maryland case, Blood v. Stoneridge and Fountain Green Homeowners’ Assoc., Inc., that analyze and apply that state’s solar rights statute;
  • Excerpts from a new federal district court case, Franklin Energy Storage One, LLC v. Kjellander (2020), analyzing the classification of energy storage facilities under PURPA;
  • Newly-excerpted materials describing policy issues related to the introduction and operation of automated and behavioral demand response programs;
  • Expanded coverage of property law issues affecting geothermal energy resources, including excerpts from Geysers Development Partnership v. Geysers Power Company (2018); and
  • Dozens of new “Notes” throughout the book that provide updated perspectives and information on the book’s wide array of excerpted materials and covered topics.

Learn more about this series.