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 White Plains, NY - Pace Law School has appointed Hartsdale Resident Jamie M. Van Nostrand the new Executive Director of its Pace Energy and Climate Center (formerly the Pace Energy Project).
The Center is part of the Law School’s influential environmental law program, which is ranked third in the nation by U.S. News & World Report.
Holding a master’s in economics in addition to his law degree, during a 22-year career in private practice, Van Nostrand represented energy clients in regulatory proceedings throughout the western U.S. and before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. No stranger to New York State, he earned his economics degree from SUNY at Albany and started his legal career with the New York Public Service Commission.
The announcement was made by Michelle Simon, Dean of Pace Law School.
Costs and caps. Van Nostrand takes over a center that for more than 20 years has been a leading multi-disciplinary source of environmental research and advocacy on issues involving the highly-regulated energy industry, both in New York State and throughout the Northeast, while training law students in these areas.
· The Center developed the first methodology for assessing the previously under-recognized environmental and social costs of power generation methods, a technique which remains a driving force in international research and policy studies.
· Recently, the Center played an active role in the Northeast Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), which is implementing a multi-state cap-and-trade program with a market-based emissions trading system designed to reduce greenhouse gases from electric generation.
“Today, we see many entities heralding their climate expertise,” said Van Nostrand. “We’ve been working in these areas for 20 years. Energy policy has always been about climate. Now that people are talking about climate, they’re talking about energy.”
Van Nostrand added that the recent change in name to the Pace Energy and Climate Center more accurately reflects the organization’s concern with reducing the environmental impacts of producing and using energy through clean, efficient and renewable alternatives, and by addressing the barriers to clean energy technologies.
M&As and teaching. Van Nostrand has been involved with energy and regulatory law for over 25 years, most recently as a partner in the Portland, Oregon office of the large national law firm Perkins Coie LLP, in the Environmental and Natural Resources national practice group.
He earned his law degree with high honors from the University of Iowa College of Law, his undergraduate degree with highest honors in Economics from the University of Northern Iowa, and his master’s in Economics from SUNY Albany. At the New York Public Service Commission in the early 1980s, he served as an assistant to the Commission for Opinions and Review and then as assistant to the chairman. He relocated to the Pacific Northwest in 1985, joining Perkins Coie and becoming a partner in 1990.
In private practice Van Nostrand represented energy clients in regulatory proceedings in eight states (Washington, Oregon, California, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, Alaska, and Arizona) and before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. He handled successful state regulatory approvals for five utility mergers or acquisitions (four of which were multi-state transactions). He capped his career in private practice in 2007 when he received a national award from the Energy Bar Association as its State Regulatory Practitioner of the Year.
In the academic world, Van Nostrand was a member of the adjunct faculty of Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland, and was a visiting professor of law at the University of Tennessee College of Law in Knoxville for Fall 2007 and at the University of Iowa College of Law in Iowa City for Spring 2008. He is admitted to the Washington, Oregon, and Idaho bars and federal circuit and district courts.
Founded in 1976, Pace University School of Law has nearly 6,500 alumni throughout the country and the world. It offers full- and part-time day and evening JD programs on its White Plains, NY, campus. The School also offers the Master of Laws in Environmental Law, Real Estate Law and in Comparative Legal Studies and an SJD in environmental law. The School of Law is part of a comprehensive, independent, and diversified University with campuses in New York City and Westchester County. www.law.pace.edu
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