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EPA’s newly final Risk Management Program (RMP) update is facing criticism from all sides over its cost-benefit calculations, especially for novel mandates to consider climate impacts and safer technologies -- provisions that industry says will be unworkably expensive but which pro-regulatory advocates say carry even greater benefits than the rule assumes. For instance, Dena Adler, senior attorney at the environmental law group Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, told Inside EPA in a March 4 interview that the final rule is an indication that EPA has improved its “awareness of the climate related hazards” facing chemical sites, and called it an “essential first step” in the agency’s efforts to address those dangers. However, she emphasized although she sees the March 1 RMP rule as a step in the right direction, the agency’s cost estimates still do not fully capture the “hard to quantify” costs of chemical accidents, such as potential health risks from chemical exposures in communities close to facilities, “lost productivity at affected facilities, emergency response costs,” and “environmental damage,” among others.

Gensler said the SEC has received over 15,000 comment letters on its proposal, the most ever received for a single proposal... “Throughout its history, the SEC has repeatedly required disclosure of information that, while not financial on its face, is nevertheless relevant to investors’ assessment of a registrant’s future financial prospects,” a letter jointly submitted to the SEC from The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and the Environmental Defense Fund stated.

In late January, the Biden administration announced that it was pausing new approvals for liquefied natural gas export terminals until it can reassess its review process. That decision hinges on a key question: Is continuing to expand the country’s already massive fossil-gas export capacity in the ​“public interest?” But amid much uncertainty and many contested claims over the issue, one thing appears clear, according to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law: The assessments that have guided U.S. LNG export authorizations over the past half-decade of the industry’s startling growth are not capturing the full scope of climate harms those exports are causing — or the economic harms those emissions will create in the country or around the world.

LNG supporters tout it as a win for climate, pointing to the pivotal role natural gas played in dethroning King Coal from the U.S. grid. As trade group API put it in its protest of the LNG pause: ​“U.S. LNG is critical for accelerating global emissions reductions by displacing higher-emitting fuels.” There’s one problem with that: There’s no guarantee that LNG shipments actually displace coal. “There’s really been no mechanism in place to ensure that [exports] displace dirtier sources and not cleaner sources,” said Max Sarinsky, an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, in a previous Canary Media feature on the subject.

A New York University study found that the estimated climate costs of continuing to export LNG outweigh the economic benefits for American households. "Under all scenarios evaluated, we found the gross climate damage greatly exceeded economic benefits," said Minhong Xu, an economist who co-authored the study.

“[O]ur findings provide a potential basis for DOE to rationally conclude that future export applications do not serve the public interest. At a minimum, our analysis supports DOE’s efforts to more closely scrutinize export applications and provides important data points for the agency’s consideration,” said one Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University analysis.

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity hosts a Feb. 7 event about modeling the energy transition, during which researchers share findings to help guide energy policy.

It stands to reason that NHTSA should use the best information possible to set CAFE standards. But, in NHTSA’s enabling statute, the U.S. Congress has made sure that NHTSA cannot do so. The statute pulls wool over the agency’s eyes in two key ways.

“There’s absolutely no reason climate should not be considered as part of the public interest,” said Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. The change is a long overdue update for the 2019 life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions that concluded US LNG exports are likely to reduce global emissions on a per-unit basis because of an assumption that LNG is replacing other fossil fuel sources, Sarinsky said.

Max Sarinsky, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, said if the Energy Department updates its analytical assumptions for gas, it could significantly change its calculus on approving new projects. But what would happen if the U.S. didn’t ship LNG? “The harder piece of it is thinking through more seriously how exporting gas will affect the energy mix globally — and particularly in the countries that we’re exporting to — and what that could mean for the pace of renewables going forward,” said Sarinsky. Sarinsky of NYU and his colleague, Minhong Xu, released a report Friday that tallied the climate damages of expanded U.S. LNG exports using two sets of social cost of greenhouse gas metrics — the administration’s interim figures and updated EPA values.