In the News

A cascade of courtroom standoffs are beginning to slow, and even reverse, the EPA rollbacks thanks to the administration’s ‘disregard for the law.’ “The Trump administration has been sloppy and careless, they’ve shown significant disrespect for rule of law and courts have called them on it,” said Richard Revesz, a professor at the New York University school of Law.

The Trump administration’s new draft plan for offshore drilling represents a colossal shift in policy by proposing to make nearly all U.S. coastal waters available for oil and gas exploration. The administration has framed this proposal as a way to achieve “energy dominance,” but this claim doesn’t add up: The United States is already the world’s number one oil and natural gas producer. What is clear is that the administration’s approach entails major environmental and social risks and ignores basic economic facts, making it a terrible deal for the American public.

Late last year, Rick Perry’s Department of Energy issued a notice of proposed rulemaking asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to bail out beleaguered coal and nuclear plants.Yesterday, FERC officially responded: Thanks, but no thanks. “DOE’s bungling of this from the start (no coordination, proposal unlike a normal 206 proceeding, Perry’s performance at House Energy hearing) very likely hurt its ability to get near-term policy in the direction it wanted (even if less than cost-of-service),” Tweeted Avi Zevin, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

In the Dec. 14 press conference, Trump said the government had taken 67 deregulatory actions through Sept. 30 — with an annual savings to society of $570 million — and had imposed just three new regulations. The administration’s cost figures ignore projected benefits for regulations it has blocked, distorting the actual impacts on society, said Denise Grab, a lawyer with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law.

Courts answered several important environmental law questions in 2017, including how the effects of greenhouse gases must be factored into project analyses. In August, a divided D.C. Circuit panel said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to adequately analyze the greenhouse gas emissions impacts of a project that it approved and ordered the agency to redo its environmental review. Ricky Revesz, a law professor at New York University and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, said the ruling adds to a growing body of case law showing that federal agencies must meaningfully consider the greenhouse gas emission impacts of their policy decisions.

In the coming weeks, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will announce its response to the Department of Energy’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR). As long as FERC decides to do something, it has to deal with a fundamental issue. The NOPR failed to answer the most critical question: just what is resilience? This question is not just a matter of semantics. Without a precise definition, FERC cannot determine whether the grid is sufficiently resilient, or gauge whether payments or other actions might be warranted.

“I do think it’s clear that Cordray’s departure will bring the CFPB closer into the president’s orbit,” said Richard L. Revesz, a law professor at New York University. “And the fact of the matter is that the director — the permanent director, whoever the president nominates — will also share the president’s agenda.”

Jason Schwartz, a research scholar at New York University School of Law, slammed the Trump administration’s changes to calculations for the social cost of greenhouse gases. “They have begun to manipulate those estimates in ways that are not at all consistent with the best science or economics,” he said. A guide on the social cost of greenhouse gases co-authored by Schwartz and published by NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity argues that using a domestic-emissions-only approach doesn’t make sense for the United States or the rest of the world.

Legal and environmental experts warn that the Trump administration’s willingness to eschew scientific consensus for political advantage typifies a worrying trend. “The administration is definitely trying to mess with the numbers to make it look like they’re saving money on these repeals,” Denise Grab, western regional director for the Institute for Policy Integrity, told ThinkProgress. “But they aren’t considering the massive benefits to the public, and the economic and scientific consensus on the substantial benefits that could be achieved by reducing this greenhouse gas pollution.”

Alongside those notices the agency released a cost-benefit analysis, which includes estimates of cost savings and climate benefits that the rule would have provided. The EPA’s original proposals to halt the standards had not included those climate benefits, Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director for New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, said. Now, in the updated analysis, the agency “monkeyed with the numbers” by adjusting the social cost of methane value.