The Nickel Report

Demand for data center capacity is rewriting the rules of site selection. With interconnection queues stretching for years, power has become the scarcest input, and properties once discounted because of known or suspected contamination can offer infrastructure support that greenfield sites often cannot. This includes large tracts of industrially zoned land that already have transmission, substations, water, and transportation access. Additionally, federal, state, and local funding and tax benefits may be available to encourage development of these brownfield sites. For many developers, the question is no longer whether to consider a brownfield, but how to do it without inheriting its problems.

My daughter is on a high school team competing in “We the People: The Citizen and the Constitution” run by The Center for Civic Education to promote education about the Constitution and Bill of Rights. I have been privileged to have conversations with her about the Federalist Papers and some Supreme Court cases. She recently reminded me of the dissent in New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, an opinion that may again become relevant to the evolution of environmental law, at least for those of us who live and function outside the Beltway.

How could a Depression-era case about the constitutionality of a certificate of public convenience and necessity be relevant to environmental law today? Well, there is a lot of discussion about ice manufacturing, which some might argue is relevant to climate change.