Regulating the Energy Transition: Issues at the Intersection of Energy and Environmental Law

A Workshop of the University of Oxford Faculty of Law, International Environmental Law Interest Group, ASIL and the University of Minnesota Energy Transition Lab. 

All Souls College, University of Oxford, 30 June - 1 July 2016             

**Please note that attendance to this workshop is by invitation only**                                  

Background

In the face of climate change and severe energy poverty, our energy systems find themselves at a critical point of transition. Legal frameworks at the international, domestic and regional levels have an important but as yet under-examined role to play in this process.

There is worldwide consensus on the urgent need for deep cuts in carbon emissions in order to avoid the disastrous ecological and social effects of climate change. The recently adopted Paris Agreement on climate change aims to hold “the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C, recognizing that this would significantly reduce the risks and impacts of climate change.”   At the same time, improving energy access is indispensable to the “right to development” of the world’s poor.  As the single greatest source of carbon emissions, the energy sector will need to undergo fundamental change at all scales to ensure equitable access to clean and secure energy in response to this three-fold ecological, economic and equity crisis. Some change is already underway thanks to efforts to limit carbon emissions and promote low-carbon technologies at national, regional and international levels.

This event, to be held at All Souls College, University of Oxford, on Thursday, 30 June and Friday, 1 July 2016, will build on existing scholarship and foster dialogue among scholars and practitioners over the growing intersection between international/transnational energy and environmental law in the energy transition. The workshop is being organised by the Faculty of Law, University of Oxford, the University of Minnesota Law School and Energy Transition Lab, together with the American Society of International Law (ASIL) International Environmental Law Interest Group.

The workshop is intended to bring leading academic thinkers from both developed and developing countries together with key stakeholders to consider questions at the cutting edge of law, policy and practice at the intersection of the environmental and energy fields. It is hoped that the papers presented and discussions held at the workshop will foster novel, cross-cutting international energy/environmental law scholarship.