Power Law Committee

Committee Overview

Electricity provides the life blood of modern society.  Electric power lights, heats and cools buildings, powers industrial processes, transmits global communication and will drive a new generation of automobiles.  Electricity generation, however, accounts for as much as forty percent of the greenhouse gas emissions in developed countries, and as a result we face major changes in the sources of electric generation.  Renewable Energy, safe nuclear power, and advanced coal combustion with carbon capture and sequestration all provide legal challenges as well as technological.

The electricity sector faces other challenges as well.  Worldwide there is an ongoing move away from monopoly power supply and toward wholesale competition.  Power trading on a constrained grid can give rise to market manipulation.  Expansion of transmission to accommodate markets competes with distributed generation, where the competition is at the equipment level not the megawatt level.  New markets in avoided emissions of greenhouse gasses and other pollutants are emerging rapidly.

The Power Law Committee provides a forum for its members to address the legal issues that necessarily arise from the ongoing changes in the sector.  Members’ interests range from the financing of generation and transmission, to the power grid and its regulation, to the emerging energy and carbon markets.  We also seek to join with other interested IBA committees in the larger discussion about global climate change.

Additionally, the Power Law Committee works with the following Committees to form the Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law Section:

Environment, Health and Safety Law
International Construction Projects
Mining Law Committee 
Oil and Gas Law Committee
Water Law Committee

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Committee Publications

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Members