Chris Carr

Chris Carr is a partner in the San Francisco office of Paul Hastings LLP and chairs the firm’s Environment and Energy Practice Group.  He is widely regarded as one of the leading infrastructure development, environmental, and energy lawyers in the United States.  Drawing on his experience with the U.S. Department of the Interior and the U.S. Department of State, Mr. Carr represents businesses, landowners, public agencies, and nonprofits in all areas of environmental and natural resources law, including energy and infrastructure, water, forestry, agriculture, mining, and coastal and marine resources.

In particular, his practice focuses on permitting and litigation under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Clean Water Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and their California counterparts: the California ESA, the Porter-Cologne Water Quality Control Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA).  He has deep expertise and broad experience in local, state, federal, and international laws, regulations, initiatives, and programs addressing climate change and driving the energy transition.

Mr. Carr frequently defends permits, approvals, and environmental review documents for energy and other infrastructure projects in federal and state courts, and defends against “citizen suits” brought under federal and state environmental statutes for all manner of land and resources development.

Mr. Carr was Chair of Morrison and Foerster’s Global Energy & Environment Practice and Co-chair of its Cleantech Practice Group from 2010 – 2017.  He is a regular speaker at Berkeley Law and Stanford Law School.  Mr. Carr received his J.D. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

He has published widely in the area of environmental regulation, and is frequently interviewed by the broadcast and print media for his views, including:

• Bob Egelko, San Francisco Chronicle, California pledges to redouble climate efforts after Supreme Court’s EPA ruling (Jun. 30, 2022), available at: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/California-vows-to-redouble-climate-efforts-after-17277969.php
• Patrick Sisson, Bloomberg News, The Landmark Environmental Law Inside a NIMBY Firestorm (Apr. 20, 2022), available at: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-04-20/the-landmark-environmental-law-inside-a-nimby-firestorm
• Chris Carr, Wall Street Journal, The Environmental Law That Is Strangling California (Mar. 9, 2022), available at: https://www.wsj.com/articles/environmental-law-uc-university-california-berkely-students-enrollment-college-applications-acceptance-rejection-campus-building-codes-ceqa-11646864365
• Chris Carr, Navi Dhillon, Lucas Grunbaum, The CEQA Gauntlet: How the California Environmental Quality Act Caused the State’s Construction Crisis and How to Reform It (Feb. 2022), available at: https://www.pacificresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/CEQA_Report_Final.pdf