“Erin Brockovich,” the 2000 biographical movie about the woman who crusaded for a safe public water supply in her California city, fueled Kristin Brunn’s interest in the environment.
Later, as an Environmental Science and Policy major at Duke University, Brunn took an environmental law class taught by UNC School of Law professor Don Hornstein.
“I absolutely loved that class, and it further reinforced my plan to pursue environmental law,” says Brunn, now in Carolina Law’s class of 2019.
She was awarded the first full-tuition academic law scholarship in the country for a student to study the intersection of environmental and energy law, one focus of the UNC School of Law Center for Climate, Energy, Environment and Economics (CE3).
A Duke Energy Foundation gift is funding the new scholarship and a range of projects aimed at expanding CE3’s mission. The scholarship is one of many innovative initiatives in progress.
CE3 director Victor Flatt, the Tom & Elizabeth Taft Distinguished Professor in Environmental Law, notes Brunn’s “stellar academic history and commitment to studying environmental issues in a real-world setting.”
A 2015 graduate, Brunn wrote policy briefs for Duke’s Marine Lab and worked one summer on environmental projects in South Africa.
While at Carolina Law, Brunn will explore career options.
“I hope to have a few diverse internships/externships that will help me determine exactly what kind of legal career suits me best,” Brunn says. “I expect it to involve the environment in some way.”
Meanwhile, in a new renewable-energy collaboration, CE3 and UNC Law’s Center for Banking and Finance held an April workshop on Law, Policy and the Future of Solar Financing, with the UNC School of Government’s Center for Environmental Finance.
Participants from academia, government, the finance industry, nonprofits and the renewable energy field discussed future demand for solar energy, financing options for solar projects, and ways to increase private-sector funding of North Carolina solar projects through law or policy changes.
“The financing of solar is growing, both as a need for the solar industry and as a way to make money for the finance industry,” Flatt says.
“There was general consensus that the role of Public Utilities Commissions in traditionally regulated states was important, and that there were possible ways to use community solar to help people at a small scale,” he says.
By July, Flatt expects the group to issue recommendations, which he hopes will result in more available solar financing and a good rate of return on investment.
In another initiative, CE3 has teamed with regional partners on a South Atlantic Sea Grant to assess potential damage to communities from problems associated with climate change. The project is funded by Sea Grant, a federal entity that awards grants to states with a completed coastal zone management plan.
The goal is “to understand how coastal communities are susceptible to sea-level rise and other hazards from climate change,” Flatt says. He is co-director of the North Carolina Coastal Resources Law, Planning and Policy Center with Carolina Law adjunct professor Lisa Schiavinato.
That center and CE3 will work with several universities to study legal and policy challenges to hazards-planning.
The initiative will “improve resilience in coastal communities through a participatory process of risk communication and data development to build local hazards-planning capacity,” Schiavinato says. “We’re proud that this project also will provide practical training to law students on the intersection of land-use planning and environmental law and policy.”
-June 1, 2016