All News Clips
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The Carbon Offset Industry Has Integrity Problems. Is It Time for Federal Regulation?
Voluntary carbon markets remain largely unregulated despite these serious integrity issues. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have recently taken small steps in the right direction. But as long as voluntary carbon markets continue to exist, the U.S. government should explore ways to more proactively regulate them.
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Biden Officials Finish Drove Of Climate Change Policies In Regulatory Blitz
EPA’s passenger vehicle rule’s “thorough analysis also offers a critical roadmap for Department of Justice litigators who will soon brief this issue. Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argued Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, in a March 25 blog post.
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A Preemptive Approach to Major Questions Doctrine Challenges
In a recent post for the Yale Journal on Regulation’s Notice and Comment blog, the regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, Max Sarinsky, argued that administrative agencies should aim to preemptively rebut major questions doctrine challenges by citing previous agency actions. Sarinsky identified new Environmental Protection Agency vehicle pollution standards as an example.
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Senate Tees Up Vote On EPA Auto Rule, Officials Weigh HFC Enforcement
Also, on April 18, New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity hosts a webinar about the role of economics in regulatory advocacy. The discussion will cover ways to engage in the regulatory process including the White House’s National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Frontiers of Benefit-Cost Analysis.
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Group Offers Early ‘Major Questions’ Rebuttal For Contractor Climate Rule
The defense of the Federal Acquisition Regulatory (FAR) Council’s pending rule comes as another analyst recently argued that agencies should use EPA’s recently finalized vehicle emissions rule as a model for how to counter such major questions attacks, including by citing statutory mandates for the rule and drawing analogies with past agency practice. “Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argued Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), last month.
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Environmentalists Say Stricter RMP Rule Still Exempts Many Vulnerable Sites
Environmentalists and their allies say EPA’s recently finalized updates to its Risk Management Program (RMP) rule leaves out many measures they believe are necessary to ensure it covers all facilities at risk of accidental releases, in particular because the agency rejected calls to expand the list of chemicals whose use at a site triggers RMP requirements. “Safeguards are only helpful where they’re applicable,” Dena Adler, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, told Inside EPA by email.
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A Full Trip Around the Sun, Yet EJ Remains Eclipsed at FERC
The court’s March 29, 2024, decision in Sierra Club v. FERC held that “FERC enjoys broad discretion” when it considers requests by pipeline companies to extend their timeline to put a project into service. However, the D.C. Circuit has previously offered course corrections to FERC in pipeline cases, and FERC still faces legal vulnerability with its current approach. Al Huang, a panelist at the 2023 Roundtable, recently called on FERC to issue “comprehensive guidance … to aid both FERC and permit applicants, and increase the legal durability of the Commission’s decisions.”
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Recent EPA Rules Highlight Officials’ Efforts To Boost Legal Defense
“EPA’s thorough analysis also offers a critical roadmap for Department of Justice litigators who will soon brief this issue. Other agencies should study EPA’s approach and follow suit,” argues Max Sarinsky, the regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, in a March 25 blog post. He adds: “EPA details how its new rule is consistent with decades of agency practice and legislative purpose,” his blog post says, adding that the agency explained how the Clean Air Act text, legislative history and past rules are all consistent with considering and promoting electric vehicles.
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Yet Another Way To Rebut Major Questions Doctrine Challenges
In the nearly two years since the Supreme Court upended administrative law with its formal introduction of the MQD in West Virginia, federal agencies, scholars, and advocates have been coming up with ways to shore up new regulations against potentially-heightened scrutiny. Often these recommendations come in the form of particular analyses that an agency could include in a regulatory preamble that rebuts claims that a regulation is novel, transformative, economically significant, or any of the Court’s other supposed markers of “majorness.” For example, alongside the Institute for Policy Integrity, our organization urged the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to include a detailed accounting of “regulatory antecedents” in its final clean car rule to help rebut claims that it was a “novel” or “unheralded” agency action; as Max Sarinsky recently detailed, the EPA thoroughly did so in its final regulation.
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One Year Later: We Are Still Waiting For Environmental Justice
"At FERC’s EJ Roundtable one year ago, we called for the Commission to publish comprehensive guidance on environmental justice. Such guidance would aid both FERC and permit applicants, and increase the legal durability of the Commission’s decisions. It would also make good on commitments from FERC and the Biden Administration to center environmental justice in policy decisionmaking... One year later, however, the Commission has not taken substantial steps towards the goal of integrating environmental justice into its processes and decision making. We continue to see projects that are not in the public interest approved, leaving behind vulnerable communities.” - Al Huang, Director of Environmental Justice, Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.