Willoughby Prize for two UCalgary Law profs

The Willoughby Prize is awarded annually to the author or authors of an article of outstanding merit, published during the year in the Journal of Energy and Natural Resources Law. The Prize is awarded in memory of Geoffrey Willoughby (1936–1989), one of the leading contributors to the development of energy law in the UK.

Fenner and Allan's article, "Regulating energy innovation: US responses to hydraulic fracturing, wastewater injection and induced seismicity," focuses on how hydraulic fracturing activities – including wastewater injection – generated, and are still generating, a spectrum of regulatory responses. These regulatory inconsistencies are due to many variables, including: differing opinions on how regulators ought to manage new technologies with unknown environmental impacts; the promise of economic benefit; how politically contested hydraulic fracturing is in the jurisdictions in question; and the fact that much is still unknown about the environmental impacts of hydraulic fracturing.

According to The Trust, the article brings together a large variety of material in a useful synthesis of the current state of play on regulation in the US, and reaches a clear conclusion on the kind of regulation which appears to make sense in the current state of knowledge, retaining an objective approach throughout.