Trip to Washington

Dear reader,

I was one of the lucky ones who were placed in the Energy Law broadening module of the Honours College. As a law student I was curious about this specific field of law. Additional benefit was that I had the opportunity to go Washington to visit the George Washington Law School (GW). Before the summer school started, I went on a holiday trip to New York with some fellow students. After a week of sightseeing in New York, we went to Washington.

The great thing about the summer school was the cooperation with students of GW. The first day consisted of lectures on European and American energy law, a tour around the campus and a visit to a laboratory on energy properties of materials. The next day, we visited the net-zero energy home of Professor Scott Sklar. The special thing about his house, is that it’s independent of the energy grid. It was very interesting to watch this ‘weird’ house. Furthermore, we went during the summer school amongst other things to the DC Public Service Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).

The summer school ended with group presentations of topics related to energy law, like battery storage and power to gas. Although we had a tight schedule, there was plenty of spare time to visit places like Donald Trump’s White House, the Supreme Court and many more. In May 2018, the American students are coming to the Netherlands to visit our university and to present our joint-papers we’ve been working on last semester. All in all, the Washington summer school was a great experience which I didn’t wanted to miss.

Gopesh Tamminga, Dutch Civil Notary Law student.