2020 was a year of unprecedented circumstances and change, and more change is coming in 2021—this time, in the form of significant modifications to the nationwide permitting program. On September 15, 2020, the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) published a notice of proposed rulemaking to reissue and modify nationwide permits (NWPs), ahead of the usual five-year reauthorization schedule for the current 2017 NWPs ...
The future of agriculture in Scotland is at a pivotal point. The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the challenges faced by farmers and crofters who have worked tirelessly to ensure food production and land management continues at a time when other industries have been brought to a standstill ...
Key Points In a rare move, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals published two opinions about subjects that are hardly ever discussed in the court's published National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) decisions. For the first time in more than three decades, the court examined impacts to an old-growth redwood forest, and for the first time since 2016, the court examined indirect (downstream) carbon emissions. In Bair v ...
Law No. 11 of 2020 on Job Creation (the “Job Creation Law” or known as the Omnibus Law) was issued and came into effect on 2 November 2020. It is mainly based on the principles of the equalization of rights, legal certainty, greater ease of doing business, togetherness, and independence ...
The government has launched its long-awaited Energy White Paper, expanding on the government’s 10-point plan for a Green Industrial Revolution. The Energy White Paper commits to the creation and support of up to 220,000 jobs over the next decade, ranging from jobs in major power generation, carbon capture storage and hydrogen projects supported by a new £240 million net zero Hydrogen Fund, to the retrofit of homes and buildings for greater energy efficiency ...
AELEX POWER SECTOR GUIDE - % ǼLEX Legal .avada-select-parent .select-arrow{background-color:#ffffff}.select-arrow{background-color:#ffffff} With the country proceeding to fundamentally restructure the industry to secure the supply of reliable, affordable and, ultimately, sustainable energy, the Nigerian government has introduced some new policies to curb some of these fundamental limitations ...
On November 27, 2020, the Federal Official Gazette published Resolution No. 50, by means of which the National Mining Agency (“ANM”) amends Resolution No. 46/2020, which suspended the deadlines of certain procedural and material acts and the extension of mining titles. According to the new wording, the period of certain procedural and material acts as well as the tacit approval by the Agency is suspended from March 20, 2020 to December 31, 2020 ...
British Government aims to forbid import of commodities from deforested areas as a consequence of international discussions focused on ESG. In 2019, the British Government hired the independent consultancy 'Global Resource Initiative' ("GRI") to evaluate actions to ensure a more sustainable economy for the United Kingdom ...
This alert provides links to the latest insights and commentary on key energy and environmental issues from the Hunton Andrews Kurth team. Links to our most recent posts on the Nickel Report Blog for this month are below. Please subscribe to receive alerts when new posts are published by visiting our blog and entering your email address in the subscribe field or by following us on Twitter. For current Covid-19 related news updates please read more here ...
In the age of COVID-19, demand for surface wipes, sprays and similar products is at record levels. Retail stores have struggled to keep supplies stocked and shelves may once again be emptied when the winter flu season arrives. If schools and businesses reopen concurrently, the prospects of securing these products becomes even bleaker, which may re-fuel consumer stockpiling ...
For most of the last three decades, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama have waged a multifront water war, filing cases in federal courts across the United States. This war, and these cases, turn on apportionment of two river basins: the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) River Basin and the Alabama-Coosa- Tallapoosa (ACT) River Basin. At the heart of this legal tug of war lie competing uses—and visions—for the basins ...
Most employers are familiar with the role of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) in enforcing standards to ensure that the working men and women in the United States have a safe and healthy workplace. The current COVID-19 pandemic has presented new challenges to OSHA for reviewing how employers are protecting their employees ...
The new legal framework applicable to the Angolan oil sector was approved by Presidential Decree 271/20 of 20 October (the "Decree"). The Decree makes a substantial change to the rules on local Angolan content applicable in the sector and it naturally repeals Order 127/03 of 25 November.The new legal framework now extends to service providers and suppliers of goods and services to the oil sector ("Providers") and not only which oil companies (i.e ...
Presidential Decree no. 229/20 of 8 September 2020 has been published and its aim is to reassess the measures imposed by Presidential Decree no. 142/20, considering the evolution of the epidemiological situation. The new decree renews most of the measures already in force, although it also eases some restrictions ...
Coronavirus Digest no. 4 Patents and other intellectual property rights 1. Patents Moderna reveals that it may not hold the patent rights for the vaccine against Covid-19, because it was not the first to file the patents. This came after the US National Institute of Health claimed co-ownership of the rights to this vaccine. Read more here ...
On September 1, the California legislature sent to the Governor amendments to California’s Hazardous Waste Control Law. Once signed by the Governor, AB 2920 will allow retail hazardous waste to be shipped on a “consolidated manifest.” This simplified procedure has been available for specific types of hazardous waste such as used oil, but this is the first time it has applied a broad, general category such as “retail hazardous waste ...
For the past decade or so, the regulated community and federal courts alike grappled with the outer reaches of the Clean Water Act (CWA) point source permitting program. The core of the program—the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES)—is clear enough. Under the NPDES program, discharges from point sources to navigable waters (what qualifies as “navigable waters,” i.e ...
