This book has several groups of potential readers. Students and professors at law schools, undergraduate institutions, and graduate programs such as public policy, business, urban planning, and environmental studies can use the book instead of a case book or as a supplement to a case book. The material is adequately detailed to provide substantive topics that will fill an entire course or provide a more succinct description of complex issues from case books or professor-prepared readings. Attorneys, policymakers and their staff, and other individuals who encounter energy issues in their work also should find this book to be a useful introduction to the field of energy law and policy as well as a reference point for specific energy issues.

The book provides a broad yet detailed understanding of the major components of energy systems, energy infrastructure, and energy markets and the laws that guide their development. It covers all major energy policy sectors including oil and gas extraction, electricity regulation, renewable energy development, and regulation of vehicles and transportation fuels. The book is timely—describing rapidly changing policy in environmental regulation such as hydraulic fracturing, planning for electric transmission lines, state carbon reduction and clean energy mandates, and natural gas and oil exports. It also places these recent developments in the context of the many long-lasting policies that created current energy infrastructure and markets.