Environment, Energy and Natural Resources Center

It’s a perfect time to launch the EENR Center at the University of Houston Law Center. The Center for Environment, Energy and Natural Resources at the University of Houston is the first law program in the country to link energy issues with impacts on environment and natural resources. Building on the academic excellence of the faculty in these areas and the complex and multi-faceted energy and environmental issues in Houston, the Center provides a forum for education and discussion of the most important issues of the day, such as climate change, air pollution, clean coal and renewable energy. The Center is the proud sponsor of the Environmental & Energy Law & Policy Journal, the first law review devoted to the intersection of environmental and energy law, and the University of Houston Environment and Energy Law Society UHEELS. Additionally,the EENR Center is a component of the new Strategic Energy Alliance at the University of Houston.The Center also works closely with the EENR LLM program at the Law Center.

Sponsors

EENR Center has ambitious plans – and equally ambitious fundraising goals. The Houston law firm of Connelly Baker & Wotring LLP has provided initial capital to create the EENR Center and is recognized as a Founding Partner. Additional partners are now needed, and the Law Center intends to fully acknowledge the firms and individuals who step forward to help make EENR center a success.

The EENR Center would like to recognize and thank our current sponsors:

Grand Underwriters

• Connelly Baker & Wotring LLP
• Gardere Wynne Sewell LLP

Benefactors

• Porter & Hedges LLP

Sponsors

• El Paso Corporation
• Blackburn Carter, P.C.
• Environmental & Natural Resources
  Law Section of the State Bar of Texas

Become a sponsor of the EENR center

Recent Events

Adjunct Steve Susman discusses EENR class in the June 2008 edition of the Atlantic Monthly

Center for Interagency Environmental Cooperation Examines Legislative Mechanisms to promote efficient CO2 sequestration
The Center for Interagency Environmental Cooperation, a part of the EENR Center that examines Interagency Procedural Conflicts and proposes solutions through focused faculty research and student interaction inside and outside of an Interagency Environmental Cooperation class, will be posting a white paper within the next two weeks concerning possible legislative solutions to multi-jurisdictional barriers to CO2 sequestration. The Center spoke with members of and examined work prepared by the EPA advanced coal work group on CO2 sequestration www.epa.gov/air/caaac/coaltech. That group proposed a regulatory mechanism for the EPA to permit CO2 sequestration. With interest from Congress and the EPA, the Center for Interagency Environmental Cooperation decided to try and go further and examine many of the difficult issues around sequestration and propose legislative solutions. Check back for the finished product after May 15.

The Land Use and Environment Law Review selected Professor Victor Flatt’s article – Gasping for Breath: The Administrative Flaws of Federal Hazardous Air Pollution Regulation and What We Can Learn from the States – as one of the year’s ten best environmental law articles (out of over 400). Flatt, who serves as the A.L. O'Quinn Chair in Environmental Law and director of the Center for Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources Law at the Law Center, previously made the list in 1998 and was selected as a finalist on three other occasions. Flatt’s work, which originally appeared in 34 Ecology L. Q. 107 (2007), is related to his work under a grant from the Houston Endowment that examined the regulatory environment behind Houston’s air toxics.

Media tunes into EENR Center's plan to offer a course in Carbon Dioxide trading.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research, one of the world's most important research centers on climate change, published a story concerning the University of Houston Law Center's EENR sponsored EELPJ symposium on climate change legislation. The article can be read here.

The EENR Center is proud to welcome Brigham Daniels who will be joining us as an assistant professor beginning in the fall.
Brigham graduated from Stanford Law School ('03) where he was a member of the Stanford Law Review and an active participant in the environmental law society. He is currently a PhD candidate in Environmental Sciences and Policy at Duke University's Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences.
He also earned a Masters of Public Administration (2000) and an Honors Bachelor of Science, magna cum laude (1998), from the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
His academic research has focused mainly on environmental policy and environmental political economy.
Brigham is a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (2006-08) and recipient of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship (1997).

Professor Marcilynn Burke has been selected for the Executive Committee of the Natural Resources Section of the American Association of Law Schools. This is one of her and other EENR faculty's national memberships and leadership positions is organizations associated with Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources.

Professor Victor Flatt will be a guest teacher as a part of Seattle University’s summer program in Alaska Natives and Environmental Law in Anchorage Alaska. Students in good standing at ABA accredited schools are eligible to participate.