In the News

The IRA may reduce any real or perceived tension between wholesale markets and state policies and the need for other mechanisms to harmonize wholesale markets and state policies.

Peggy Shepard, the co-chair of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council (WHEJAC), gave the administration a “D” grade on its high-profile efforts to elevate EJ throughout government decision-making. She told a New York University Institute for Policy Integrity event that the WHEJAC was able to, within the first three weeks of the new administration, put together 100 pages of recommendations, “and it took a year to get a response to this and the response was, in many cases, inadequate.”

Michael Gergen, a partner at Latham & Watkins and a board member at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI), told a Sept. 20 event held by IPI that the GHG Reduction Fund’s multi-part structure encourages EPA to use $7 billion directly for projects and invest the direct the remaining $20 billion toward other entities in a green bank structure, which provides various groups funds that can in turn finance projects.

The often-cited estimate of the law’s climate spending “actually pretty dramatically understates the total scale of investment,” argued Jeremiah Baumann, chief of staff at DOE’s Office of the Undersecretary of Infrastructure, during a Sept. 20 event hosted by New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Nicky Sheats, director of the Center for the Urban Environment at Kean University in Union, NJ, who also advises the White House on EJ issues, accused the industry of “trying to undermine the regulations by saying they should be able to trade jobs for pollution” at a Sept. 20 Institute for Policy Integrity event where the proposal was discussed. “No other community is asked to do that,” he said, calling the effort “extortion.”

A proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that would standardize public companies’ disclosures of climate risk information is getting strong support from the general public, investors, companies of various sizes across a wide range of sectors, law and business scholars, public officials, climate scientists, and environmental advocates – including EDF. We joined the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law to submit letters supporting the proposed standards. Our letters focus on three reasons why the SEC is on strong legal footing.

The quality of lawyering matters. For proof of this, you need look no further than the experience of one Donald Trump. Presidents normally win about 70 percent of their regulatory-law cases, The Washington Post has reported. But the Trump administration lost 78 percent of its cases, according to data from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law.

President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the White House’s regulatory office possesses a background in environmental law, has written extensively on federal regulations and has drawn support from peers who served under Democratic and Republican administrations. Richard Revesz, a former dean of New York University’s law school known as Ricky, may also play a prominent role in shepherding the Biden administration’s policy agenda into force if Republicans take control of one or both chambers of Congress in January.

NYU Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity has tracked and commented on regulatory activity involving ESG in the past few years. Policy Integrity has submitted comments on proposed rules from the US Department of Labor involving retirement plan fiduciaries’ ability to integrate ESG considerations into investment and proxy voting decisions. And recently the institute prepared comments on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed new requirements for ESG fund names and ESG funds’ disclosures on investing and voting practices.

The White House is bringing on a new cast of senior climate and energy officials to succeed the veterans who helped build the Biden administration’s climate policies. Biden on Friday named his pick for another White House post that could have major implications for regulations across the federal government, including climate and energy rules. The president announced Richard Revesz, a New York University law professor who runs an environmental think tank, to lead the White House Office of Information of Regulatory Affairs, or OIRA.