In “No Cutting the (Priority) Line!: Incidental Beneficiaries to Assumed Contracts and Leases Cannot Assert Cure Claims Against Debtors,” colleagues Dania Slim and Alana A. Lyman examine a recent Second Circuit decision that suggests incidental beneficiaries without legal rights under assumed contracts or leases may not assert cure claims.
In “Fifth Circuit Permits the Use of the Social Cost of Carbon, for Now,” Anne Idsal Austin and David M. McCullough examine the court’s decision to allow the Biden administration to further develop the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) but to leave open the possibility of future judicial scrutiny of its implementation.
The White House has released the text of the President’s new Executive Order strengthening the Federal Government’s commitment to taking new actions to enhance and promote environmental justice. The Order was published in the Federal Register on April 26, 2023 at 88 FR 25251. President Clinton’s pioneering 1994 Executive Order remains effective, but the Federal Government must, as part of a whole-of-government approach to environmental justice, “build upon and strengthen its commitment to deliver environmental justice to all communities across America.”
In today’s roundup, Americans can buy homes with bitcoin, new tech aims to engineer a novel building material, federal investments boost the coastline (and construction sales), and more.
In today’s roundup, construction waxes and wanes, energy goals are set, and concerns abound for the commercial real estate market in the United States and Europe.
Design professionals, real estate developers and builders alike are advocating for a relatively new way of using one of the world’s oldest building materials—wood—in large-scale commercial and residential construction projects. Mass timber, or structural timber, touts such benefits as carbon reduction and seismic durability—all with a lower construction time. With ESG on the minds of clients, investors and tenants, mass timber projects present an attractive construction option for the integration of sustainable resources and these various benefits.
Making good on a promise to redefine the Clean Water Act (CWA) term, “Waters of the United States” or WOTUS, on January 18, 2023, the latest revised definition of “Waters of the United States” was published in the Federal Register by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) at 86 FR 3004. The effective date of this rule was on March 20, 2023. Remarkably, this action marks the fourth time in eight years that these agencies have attempted to craft a workable definition of WOTUS and thereby affect far-ranging impacts on everything from infrastructure and agriculture to private land use. While the agencies indicate that the newly redefined WOTUS is, in many ways, a return to the longstanding regulatory regime, there are several notable changes.
Read more in Seeking Certainty: Redefining “Waters of the United States” by Anthony B. Cavender and Ashleigh Myers.
On March 8, 2023, the Department of Energy (DOE) announced approximately $6 billion in funding to accelerate decarbonization projects in energy intensive industries and provide American manufacturers a competitive advantage. Funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), the Industrial Demonstrations Program will focus on revolutionizing energy intensive industrial processes with the highest emissions, where decarbonization technologies will have the greatest impact. Industries that represent the greatest opportunities include iron, steel, steel mill products, aluminum, cement, concrete, glass, pulp, paper, industrial ceramics and chemical products.
Read more in “Department of Energy Announces $6 Billion Funding Opportunity for Industrial Decarbonization and Emissions Reduction Projects” by Elina Teplinsky, Sheila McCafferty Harvey, Sidney L. Fowler, and Ashley L. Meredith.
Artificial intelligence (AI) systems captured considerable attention with the release of a large language chatbot, ChatGPT, by OpenAI, in November of last year. On March 14, OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, a more powerful “multimodal” chatbot responding to both text and images. And, on March 21, Google launched its conversational computer program, Bard, to compete with GPT-4. These chatbots allow users to initiate detailed queries or requests and receive prompt responses in complete sentences. Users are not forced to scroll through a list of results like those produced by search engines and follow-up questions can be asked. AI systems have been touted for many years and these new breakthroughs may drastically change the way that we create content.
Recently, two Federal policies have been released that could have a significant effect upon environmental remediation and the emergency response procedures and policies of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The recent train derailment in Palestine, Ohio, may bring them into sharper focus. The regulated community may find it useful to take notice of these directives.
