Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law (JERL)
About the Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law (JERL)
Published quarterly, the Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law (JERL) is the journal of the IBA’s Section on Energy, Environment, Natural Resources and Infrastructure Law (SEERIL).
The Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law is the leading refereed journal in the field of energy and natural resources law offering global coverage of legal issues within these sectors. The Journal covers oil and gas law, mineral law (covering legal questions relating to minerals, including non-fuel minerals and the nuclear fuel cycle), coal law, water law and renewable energy law (which includes legal aspects of such matters as hydro and geothermal power, solar, tidal, wind and ocean energy, and timber and agricultural waste use).
JERL was launched in January 1983, under the editorship of Professor Terence Daintith, now a Professional Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies in London.
Editor, Don Smith
The Journal's current Editor is Professor Don C Smith (pictured), Director of the Environmental and Natural Resources Program at the University of Denver (US) Sturm College of Law where he teaches Comparative Environmental Law and Contemporary Issues in Oil and Gas. Kaisa Huhta, associate professor of European law at the University of Eastern Finland, is the journal’s Associate Editor. The Editors are assisted by the Journal Board and Editorial Advisory Committee, comprised of members of the Academic Advisory Group (AAG) of IBA SEERIL. Together, they bring to the journal an unsurpassed expertise in all areas of energy and natural resources law.
Featuring contributions written by some of the finest academic minds and most successful practitioners in this area of study, JERL is a highly respected journal committed to reflecting contemporary issues that face the energy and natural resources sectors.
The Journal of Energy & Natural Resources Law (JERL) is in Clarivate's Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), which tracks the most influential journals in their respective fields. JERL received an impact factor of 2.1 in 2024 and ranks in the top 25 per cent of law journals.
Writing for JERL
The Editors welcome the submission of articles that illuminate legal problems or issues currently faced by governments, companies and international organisations by setting them within their general legal, economic or political context. Of particular interest are articles that record the actual experience of lawyers resolving practical problems or developing legal devices or techniques, as well as those from academics contributing the fruits of their research into larger issues of law, economics or politics.
The Journal is published quarterly, with the cut-off for submissions being approximately 12 weeks ahead of an issue's cover date. The word limit for submissions is 10,000 words.
To submit an article, please read and follow the guidance below:
Latest issue - Vol 43 No 3 (September 2025)
This paper serves as an editorial to the Special Issue of the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law entitled ‘Catalysing Cooperation for Energy Transition: Enhancing Regulatory Frameworks for Energy Co-location, Cooperatives, and Communities’. The theme of the Special Issue revolves around the syllable ‘co’, which appears in four words: cooperation, co-location, cooperatives, and communities – encapsulating the four ‘co-s’, as we refer to them.
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Energy cooperatives are increasingly recognised as the hallmark example of citizen-led energy initiatives. These energy cooperative initiatives are a crucial piece of the decarbonisation puzzle but represent complex legal structures to enable community collaboration and accelerate decarbonisation. .
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This article contributes to the literature an analytical framework for determining and comparing legislative notions of ‘energy community’. The framework consists of membership, financial investment, decision-making, activities and benefits as expressions of community. The article further adds a comparison of the notions of community in EU minimum-harmonisation directives and member states’ transpositions on energy communities. The analysis produces diverging notions of community.
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The ‘local electricity market’ (LEM), which adopts a decentralised way of organising energy transactions, is considered a promising way of further engaging consumers in the low-carbon energy transition. Yet, so far, few studies have delved into the legal issues of applying this new market setting.
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Lowering the immense share of urban areas in global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (70 per cent) is notoriously difficult due to a lack of space and grid capacity. While positive energy districts (PEDs) aim at matching consumption and production profiles of buildings to efficiently use various capacities jointly, this concept is not explicitly facilitated through law.
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Distributed energy resources (DER) will increasingly supply citizens with power. As fixtures on privately owned land, DER are governed by private property law which presents challenges for collective ownership. Strata/condominium titles, along with homeowner associations (HOAs), provide solutions, allowing DER to be co-owned, managed and maintained.
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Ecovoltaics offer a critical solution to the land use conflict between large-scale solar (photovoltaic) energy generation and biodiversity regeneration. No universal definition of ecovoltaics exists, and its implementation has been confined to ecological scholarship and pilot studies in European Union countries, the United Kingdom and the United States.
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Local governments can play a pivotal role in enacting just and democratic transitions through engaging communities in energy infrastructures. However, the relationships between local government and community energy innovations remains insufficiently examined in Canada.
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Community Wealth Building (CWB) is a growing international policy movement for local economic development that seeks to advance democratic economies using the support of place-based ‘anchor institutions’. Alongside the international rise of net zero law, there has also been increasing global interest in enhancing community ownership and engagement in local energy transitions.
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The participation of heavy industry in decentralised, bottom-up forms of voluntary association (energy cooperatives) aimed at operating in the energy market presents significant challenges from a legal and regulatory perspective. While there is a substantial body of literature on energy cooperatives – highlighting the benefits and difficulties experienced by their members – and a growing focus on the decarbonisation of heavy industry, existing research lacks a normative framework that integrates these two critical areas.
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This article examines the role of cooperatives, particularly energy cooperatives, in Poland's energy transition, emphasising their legal, financial and social dimensions. It assesses the extent to which different types of cooperatives contribute to renewable energy development and democratisation of the energy sector, focusing on their classification as prosumers and their access to public funding.
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The European Union is promoting positive energy districts as a model for decarbonising urban energy systems. New projects are being implemented, though their regulation and organisation are disjointed and underdeveloped.
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The energy cooperative ènostra provides 100 per cent renewable electricity all over Italy, promotes energy-saving campaigns and supports sustainable electricity procurement. Despite not meeting EU Renewable Energy Community (REC) criteria, it supports collective self-consumption and local REC initiatives, offering tailored consultancy for over 50 projects in Italy.
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ISSN 0264-6811
How to order
Print subscriptions and online access to the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law are available to purchase from Taylor & Francis. IBA SEERIL members can access all content with their existing IBA username and password through the 'current issue' links above.
Review books
Please send information regarding books for review to the IBA editor at editor@int-bar.org.
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