PUBLISHED:September 18, 2010

Recent grad writes prize-winning paper on "clean coal"

Jonathan Skinner ’10 received the Public Justice Foundation’s Roscoe Hogan Environmental Law Essay prize for his paper, "Myths of Clean Coal’s Future: The Story of Methylmercury." He wrote the paper as an independent study project under the supervision of James Salzman, Duke’s Samuel Fox Mordecai Professor of Law at the Law School and Nicholas Institute Professor of Environmental Policy.

Skinner’s paper drew in part from research he undertook while enrolled in Duke’s Environmental Law and Policy Clinic. Along with others students, Skinner helped write an amicus brief to the United States Supreme Court on mountaintop removal mining and its impacts on water quality. He also researched the conversion of elemental mercury to methylmercury in North Carolina’s coastal waters while with the clinic.