The Energy Charter Treaty (ECT) is one of the best-known and most controversial of the international investment treaties. The energy transition necessary to achieve the Paris Agreement climate target will require large and sustained flows of investment capital. Scholars, environmentalists, industry representatives, and governmental officials have intensively debated the modernization of the ECT. The main point of contention is whether the ECT can facilitate the energy transition or whether it entrenches fossil lock-in in unsustainable and unjust ways. This article proposes a comprehensive and integrated approach to the ECT, guided by the theoretical matrix of Earth system law scholarship. Our analysis reveals that the ECT cannot address contemporary socio-ecological challenges, but rather it remains a sectoral piece of a supranational economic constitution far removed from the most pressing exigencies of the Anthropocene.

Law plays an important role in reshaping and enforcing governance efforts in radical shifts and can function as a catalyst for transitioning governance towards sustainability. This article assesses the capacity of law to facilitate decarbonization as a radical societal shift. It argues that decarbonization demands fundamental and systemic restructuring in law and legal thinking. This should also be reflected in legal scholarship and, most importantly from the point of view of this article, in the methodological choices and approaches that legal scholarship relies on to study societal challenges. To that end, the article develops a new methodological approach (disciplinary comparison) through which to study law's capacities in respect of decarbonization as a radical societal shift. Disciplinary comparison can be used to gain information on both the friction and the synergies between legal disciplines. This new methodological approach will contribute to increasing insight into law's capacities for the radical, cross-sectoral change necessitated by the need to decarbonize societies.

Nigeria faces a perennial problem of inadequate electricity generation and supply. Electricity generation from fossil fuel sources has not succeeded in meeting the electricity needs of the country. And attempts to diversify electricity generation sources to include renewable energy sources have not been successful. Although there is a policy direction supporting the inclusion of renewable energy sources for electricity generation, the Electric Power Sector Reform Act 2005 (ESPR) has not succeeded in achieving the country's sustainable electricity drive. Nigeria needs to vigorously pursue its renewable electricity objectives through a law dedicated to encouraging uptake of renewable energy. This article examines the law and the policies underpinning Nigeria's sustainable electricity drive through a critique of the EPSR Act and the energy policy in light of Nigeria's renewable electricity objectives.

Following the European Union (EU) experience, an increasing number of countries are establishing an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS). The EU ETS often serves as a ‘model’ despite fundamental differences in the receiving environment. In the EU liberalized energy markets, carbon prices are intended to raise the cost of carbon-intensive energy and thereby stimulate cleaner alternatives. In contrast, many emerging economies continue to regulate energy investments and prices, which may insulate consumers and producers from the impact of an ETS. To avoid this risk, energy economists advocate EU-style energy market reforms as a prerequisite to the introduction of the ETS concept abroad. By focusing on the cases of China, Kazakhstan, and Russia, this article highlights the limits on the exportation of the EU liberalization model and argues that, instead of energy reform, the ETS must be reconceptualized as a mechanism that integrates the regulated energy market paradigm in emerging economies.