Heather Payne

Professor Heather E Payne

Professor of Law


Professor Heather Payne is an emerging leader in the areas of energy law, environmental law, evolving regulatory policy, and the implications for property, both real and intellectual. A former chemical engineer and corporate executive, she brings a deep understanding of both the technical and economic implications of policies to address new realities in a carbon- and water-constrained world. Employing both empirical and qualitative measures, her research explores regulatory policy, the changes necessary to implement the electricity grid of the future, and how consumers will become increasingly involved in the decision-making of regulatory bodies. In addition, her work asks whether coming regulatory changes will be in the public interest.

Her articles have been published in Environmental Law, William and Mary Environmental Law and Policy Review, Idaho Law Review, Pace Law Review, and the University of San Francisco Law Review.Forbes called her research "critical reading for anyone who’s interested in regulated electric utilities (or invests in them)."

Before joining the Seton Hall law faculty in 2018, Professor Payne was Fellow and Assistant Director of the Center for Climate, Energy, Environment and Economics (CE3) at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Prior to entering academia, she clerked for Judge Martha Geer on the North Carolina Court of Appeals, interned with The Southern Environmental Law Center and The Nature Conservancy, and worked with Sears Holdings Corporation and Honeywell International. Professor Payne holds a BChE in Chemical Engineering where she graduated with High Honors from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a J.D. from University of North Carolina School of Law, where she graduated with High Honors and served as a member of the North Carolina Law Review and Symposium Editor for Environmental Law Project.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

LAW REVIEW ARTICLES

Virtual Energy, U. Ill. L. Rev. (forthcoming 2024) (with Joel Eisen & Felix Mormann)

Warrantying Health Equity, 70 U.C.L.A. L. REV. (forthcoming 2023) (with Jennifer D. Oliva)

Rebuilding Grid Governance, 48 B.Y.U. L. REV. 1057 (2023) (with Joel Eisen)

Chasing Squirrels in the Energy Transition, 52 ENVTL. L. 237 (2022)

Past The Tipping Point: How Regulators And Utilities Are And Will Be Looking At Ways To Mitigate The Inevitable Impacts of Climate Change, 43 ENERGY L.J. 191 (2022) (with Harvey Reiter, Roshi Nateghi, Judsen Bruzgul, and Michael Craig)

Unservice: Reconceptualizing the Utility Duty to Serve in Light of Climate Change, 56 U. RICHMOND L. REV. 603 (2022)

Electrifying Efficiency, 40 STAN. ENVTL. L.J. 57 (2021)

Private (Utility) Regulators, 50 ENVTL. L. 999 (2021)

Rhinoceroses Are Not Like Sneakers: A Response to Climate Changes Property, 82 OHIO ST. L.J. ONLINE 71 (2021)

The Natural Gas Paradox: Shutting Down a System Designed to Operate Forever, 80 MD. L. REV. 693 (2021)

Pulling in Both Directions: How States Are Moving Toward Decarbonization While Continuing to Support Fossil Fuels, 45 COLUM. J. ENVTL. L. 285 (2020)

Roads to Nowhere in Four States: State and Local Governments in the Atlantic Southeast Facing Sea-Level Rise, 44 Columbia J. of Envtl. L. 67 (2019) (with Shana Jones, Thomas Ruppert, Erin L. Deady, Scott Pippin, Ling-Yee Huang, and Jason M. Evans)

Sharing Negawatts: Property Law, Electricity Data and Facilitating the Energy Sharing Economy, 123 Penn State L. Rev. 355 (2019)

A Fix for a Thirsty World: Making Direct and Indirect Reuse Legally Possible, 42 Wm. & Mary Envtl. L. & Pol’y Rev. 201 (2017)

A Long Slog: What a Ten Year Hydroelectric Relicensing Process Demonstrates about Public Participation and Administrative Regulation Theories, 53 Idaho L. Rev. 41 (2017)

All of the Above: One way state regulatory frameworks impact the utility of the future, 8 Geo. Wash. J. Energy & Envtl. L. 78 (2017)

Game Over: Regulatory Capture, Negotiation, and Utility Rate Cases in an Age of Disruption, 52 U.S.F. L. Rev. 75 (2017)

A Tale of Two Solar Installations, 38 U. Haw. L. Rev. 131 (2016)

Incenting Green Technology: The Myth of Market-based Commercialization of No- and Low-Carbon Electricity Sources, 24 N.Y.U. Envtl. L.J. 404 (2016)

RIIO to REV: What U.S. Power Reform Should Learn from the U.K., 36 Pace L. Rev. 101 (2015)

Curtailment First: Why Climate Change and the Energy Industry Suggest a New Allocation Paradigm is Needed for Water Utilized in Hydraulic Fracturing, 48 U. Rich. L. Rev. 829 (2014) (with Victor Flatt)

Lake Lanier and the Corps: How Adaptive Management Could Help in the ACF System, 51 Idaho L. Rev. 279 (2014)

Not One Without the Other: The Challenge of Integrating U.S. Environment, Energy, Climate, and Economic Policy, 44 Envtl. L. 1079 (2014) (with Victor Flatt)

PRESENTATIONS

Full list of presentations available in Curriculum Vitae

Clean Energy Technologies - Growing Pains or Coming of Age?, Texas A&M University School of Law 10th Annual Energy Law Symposium (February 2019) (Panelist)

How Regulators Should Address the Potential for Stranded Shale Gas Assets, Widener University Commonwealth Law School (March 2019) (Presenter)

Shape of the Coast: Local Governments Planning for Resiliency as a Response to Sea Level Rise, at the UNC School of Law Festival of Legal Learning (February 2019) (Presenter)

Vermont Colloquium on Environmental Scholarship, (September 2018)