Adam D. Orford
Associate Professor of Law
Google Scholar and SSRN
[email protected]
Office: Room 8-106
Faculty Assistant: Joseph Nolfo, [email protected]
Areas of Expertise: Climate Change, Clean Energy, Environmental Law and Policy, Civil Procedure and Litigation
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Adam D. Orford is an expert on climate change, clean energy, and environmental law and policy. His interdisciplinary research focuses on legal strategies for deep decarbonization of the global industrial economy, with work examining clean energy development, carbon credit trading, and the regulatory frameworks governing greenhouse gas emissions.
Orford’s scholarship has appeared in Ecology Law Quarterly, the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, the Georgetown Environmental Law Review, and Frontiers in Climate Change. Previously, he was an assistant professor of law at the University of Georgia School of Law.
Before entering academia, Orford practiced in environmental and regulatory litigation, representing both public and private clients. After earning his B.A. from Arizona State University, he earned his J.D. at Columbia Law School, where he served as editor-in-chief of the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law. Orford holds an M.P.P. and a Ph.D. in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley.
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Articles
The Destruction of the Climate Spending State 51 COLUMBIA J. ENV'T LAW (forthcoming 2026)
Overselling BIL and IRA, 51 ECOLOGY L. Q. 633 (forthcoming 2025)
Blue Carbon Law, 12 SEA GRANT LAW & POLICY J. 9 (2024)
Blue Carbon, Red States, and Paris Agreement Article 6, 6 FRONTIERS IN CLIMATE 1355224 (2024)
Natural Gas and Net Zero: Mutually Exclusive Pathways for the Southeast, 39 GEORGIA STATE U. LAW REV. 1033 (2023)
Rate Base the Charge Space: The Law of Utility EV Infrastructure Investment, 48 COLUMBIA J. ENV’T LAW 1 (2022)
Clean Air Act Section 115: Is the IPCC a “Duly Constituted International Agency”?, 34 GEORGETOWN ENV’T LAW REV. 215 (2022)
Nation’s Business and the Environment: the U.S. Chamber’s Changing Relationships with Pollution, “Ecologists,” Regulations, and Renewables, 1945-1981, 12 J. ENV’T STU. & SCI. 100 (2021)
The Clean Air Act of 1963: Postwar Environmental Politics and the Debate Over Federal Power, 27 UC LAW ENV’T J. 1 (2021)
Tools for Regulators in a Changing Climate: Proposed Standards, State Policies, and Case Studies from the Western Grid, 32 GEORGETOWN ENV’T LAW REV. 227 (2020)
Chapters
Legal Reforms for a Low-Carbon Electricity Grid: Lessons from the United States, in Research Handbook on Climate Change and Infrastructure Law (Romany Webb ed., forthcoming 2025)