The GW Law Environmental and Energy Law Blog
The Environmental and Energy Law program is delighted to welcome Dr. Kristoffer Svendsen as its new Assistant Dean for Energy Law. His expertise and dedication will undoubtedly enrich our academic community. We recently caught up with Dean Svendsen to learn more about his background in energy law and related fields and hear about his plans and goals in his new role as Assistant Dean for Energy Law.
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Randall Abate, Assistant Dean for Environmental Law Studies at GW Law, delivered a lecture series on international environmental law and climate governance at Central Asian University of Environmental and Climate Change Studies (“Green University”) in Tashkent, Uzbekistan from May 20-30, 2024. Established by a presidential decree in 2023, Green University is the first university in Central Asia to focus exclusively on environmental challenges. It seeks to train the next generation of environmental and climate change governance professionals in Central Asia.
Continue reading “Dean Abate Delivers Two-Week Lecture Series at Central Asian University of Environmental and Climate Change Studies in Tashkent”The Environmental Law program is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Giovanna Gismondi as the program’s new Environmental Law Fellow, effective March 1, 2024. We recently caught up with Professor Gismondi to learn more about her background in environmental law and related fields and hear about her plans and goals in her role as the new Environmental Law Fellow.
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The Environmental and Energy Law program is delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Christine Appah-Gyamfi to lead the newly established “Access to Justice, Environmental Justice Clinic.” We recently caught up with Professor Appah-Gyamfi to learn more about her background in and passion for environmental justice and hear about the proposed goals, scope of work, and anticipated impacts of this exciting new clinic.
By Faren Bartholomew
A new microgrid is potentially coming to Ward 8 in Washington, D.C. In April 2022, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funded the new St. Elizabeths microgrid, a project that intends to bolster community resilience by maintaining power at several critical locations in Ward 8 in the event of an outage. FEMA awarded several D.C. agencies $20 million to construct the microgrid through its new Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant program (BRIC), designed to fund projects that lower the risks and mitigate the impacts of disasters on communities. The BRIC grant program outlines its guiding principles as “supporting communities through capability- and capacity-building; encouraging and enabling innovation; promoting partnerships; enabling large projects; maintaining flexibility; and providing consistency.” In fiscal year 2020, when BRIC selected St. Elizabeths to receive funding, BRIC had $500 million in available program funding. For fiscal year 2021, BRIC’s program funding doubled, with $1 billion in available funding to distribute to selected resiliency projects for states, territories, and tribes.
Continue reading “The St. Elizabeths Microgrid: The District’s Newest Microgrid Project Strives to Strengthen Community Resilience”