In the News

By setting standards that effectively make EVs the most cost-effective route for automakers, the EPA's proposed tailpipe emissions standards have the potential to transform the transportation sector. The projected benefits, both in terms of economic savings and environmental impact, underscore the importance of addressing market failures. A more comprehensive analysis of the energy efficiency gap would further clarify the rule’s merits.

Recently, the US Supreme Court has not shied away from issuing precedent-setting decisions.  Next year, that trend may continue when they take up the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo which will have deep implications for Chevron Deference. In a recent conversation, Dena Adler, Research Scholar at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, remarked that, “For decades, Congress has legislated under the assumption that it can broadly authorize agencies to reasonably interpret statutes to solve problems within their sphere of expertise. The Chevron framework allows agencies to leverage their expertise to address problems and prevents Congress from getting bogged down in technical matters that are beyond its knowledge and time-intensive to address.”

The Wall Street Journal's recent editorial argues that the White House missteps in updating its approach to regulatory cost-benefit analysis. Many experts disagree. The Biden administration’s evidence-based approach to cost-benefit analysis recognizes that both benefits and costs merit evenhanded consideration. In this way, it’s a welcome update.

Setting limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants is an important part of EPA’s legal framework for reducing climate change. In its recently proposed rule, EPA has walked the line between its congressional mandate, the Court’s West Virginia decision, and the agency’s analysis of the technological and economic realities.

Good governance requires that the federal government regularly account for its natural resources according to a standard set of evidence-based rules. It also requires a systematic approach to deciding when and how to account for environmental services, rather than doing so only when convenient to advance specific political objectives. Two recent federal documents take this task seriously, with the aim of creating a predictable system for how the government will take natural resources into account when making decisions.

A lawsuit challenging a natural gas expansion project on the East Coast could change how federal regulators assess state climate policies. “If the D.C. Circuit doesn’t step in, state ratepayers are going to end up paying twice,” said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank based at New York University School of Law. “They’ll end up paying more as the states are transitioning away from gas and electrifying building and heating and other uses.”

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity stated the act is “burdensome, irrational, and legally questionable” for several reasons.

Natasha Brunstein & Donald L. R. Goodson... [give] us a solid overview of the MQD’s triggers that is increasingly being picked up by advocates and academics. In their telling, the MQD is triggered in “extraordinary” cases where an agency action is (1) “unheralded” and (2) “transformative"... Richard L. Revesz & Max Sarinsky, Regulatory Antecedents and the Major Questions Doctrine (Dec. 12, 2022). If you work at a federal agency, please, please, please read this paper.

The White House has proposed a new rule to streamline permitting for clean energy and other infrastructure projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to conduct an environmental review before approving any major project. Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, described the rule as “fairly modest and incremental” to E&E News. “We’re in an era where preserving the environment often means building new things,” he said. “I think these regulations are trying to be sensitive to that.”

While ecosystems have sometimes appeared in the cost-benefit assessments that agencies must write to support their rules, policies and projects, there has never been a governmentwide directive or guidance for doing that accounting. As a result, ecosystem values are treated as secondary to more easily quantified benefits, Richard Revesz, administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Integrtity, along with OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar wrote in a blog post Tuesday.