In the News

“If anything, the SEC is playing catchup” with those other disclosure requirements, meaning compliance costs are already included in the regulatory baseline for many companies, the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) adds. When critics weighed the costs of the SEC rule, they did not acknowledge that companies would provide many of the same climate-related disclosures regardless of the SEC rules, which “greatly reduce[s] costs attributable to the rules,” IPI adds.

Donald Goodson, deputy director of the institute, told Regulatory Intelligence that the motivation behind the legal brief was to ensure the Eight Circuit was properly informed on the costs and benefits of the SEC's rule. "We wanted to file this brief because, based on the briefing to date, we felt the Eighth Circuit would otherwise miss this critical point — the challengers contend the costs of the SEC's final rules are excessive but ignore baseline disclosure practices for many of the regulated companies," Goodson said.

The Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization have said gas stoves are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness like asthma, cardiovascular problems, cancer and other health conditions, according to reports by groups such as the Institute for Policy Integrity and the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

The Trump administration often lost battles over its policies when they ended up in court. The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law found the administration lost over three-fourths of those fights from 2017 to 2021.

The Climate Change Superfund Act is modeled on the existing State and Federal Superfund law (which requires polluters to fund toxic waste dump cleanups) by making Big Oil climate polluters financially responsible for the environmental damages that they have caused. The top Big Oil companies will be required to pay a combined $3 Billion annually, every year for 25 years. These costs won’t fall back on consumers, according to economists and an analysis from the think tank Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law. 

"If you are trying to run a legal or compliance department, you're thinking, 'I have a lot of more work now in telling my front office what they can or cannot do,'" Donald Goodson, deputy director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, told Regulatory Intelligence. "Across the country, if you have nationwide operations, you may face conflicting requirements."

Efforts to filter carbon dioxide from the air and oceans will rapidly expand in the coming decades — but not enough to reach net-zero emissions globally, according to a landmark survey of carbon removal experts. That means global warming would be unlikely to remain below the 2-degrees-Celsius limit set by the Paris Agreement, which would require the world to offset more emissions than it produces by midcentury, the New York University School of Law study found. The study, published Wednesday by the law school's Institute for Policy Integrity, is likely the largest expert study of its kind.

“The D.C. Circuit’s opinion is clear and unequivocal,” said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. Danis penned a “friend of the court” brief on behalf of the project’s opponents.

To achieve the CLCPA's climate and justice goals, sectors other than electricity also require sustained focus and accountability, as well as incentives and dedicated funding. Placing a modest regulatory cost on harmful activities, like traffic congestion and climate pollution, can help fund cleaner, more beneficial alternatives fairly and efficiently.

However, the Trump administration’s attempt to deregulate was also often thwarted by the courts. All told, the Trump administration lost 57 percent of cases challenging its environmental policies, a much higher rate of loss than previous administrations, according to a database maintained by New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.