Prof. Shelley Welton’s paper outlining innovative strategies for strengthening grid reliability while accelerating the nation’s transition to a lower-carbon energy system has been award ASU’s Morrison Prize.
A pathbreaking paper titled “Grid Reliability Through Clean Energy,” co-authored by Shelley Welton, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Law and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, has been awarded the prestigious Morrison Prize by the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University.
The prize-winning paper was published last year in the Stanford Law Review and argues that continued reliance on fossil fuels will only exacerbate the reliability challenges plaguing the nation’s electric grid; it outlines innovative strategies for strengthening grid reliability while accelerating the nation’s transition to a lower-carbon energy system.
Welton’s co-authors are fellow law professors Alexandra Klass (University of Michigan), Joshua Macey (University of Chicago), and Hannah Wiseman (Penn State Dickinson).
“I am tremendously honored to receive the Morrison Prize as part of this wonderful group of co-authors,” said Welton. “Winning for this paper is particularly gratifying because I don’t believe we could have written this piece separately — it really was a collective effort greater than the sum of our individual expertise.”
Welton holds an affiliation with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy in the Weitzman School. At Penn Carey Law, she teaches environmental law and a climate change law seminar. She also teaches “Introduction to Energy Policy,” a university-wide graduate course, for the Kleinman Center on Energy Policy.
Her scholarship has appeared in publications including the Yale Law Journal, California Law Review, Columbia Law Review, Michigan Law Review, and Harvard Environmental Law Review.
The Morrison Prize Contest is a nationally recognized competition established in 2015 and administered through the program in law and sustainability at ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. The contest awards a $10,000 prize annually to the authors of the most impactful sustainability-related legal academic article published in North America during the previous year and is named after its benefactor, Richard N. Morrison, who co-founded ASU’s Morrison Institute for Public Policy. The winners will present this year’s winning article at ASU’s eighth annual SRP Sustainability Conference of American Legal Educators on May 12 in downtown Phoenix.
Learn more about Penn Carey Law faculty’s outstanding research and scholarship.