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  • Legal Battle Over Climate Brews Between FERC, Blue States

    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.”

  • Kent Talks Timber in New Video Series

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

  • Volume IV of the Major Questions Doctrine Reading List

    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.

  • White House Takes a Crack at Much-Needed Permitting Reform

    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.”

  • White House to Agencies: Tally Projects’ Financial Damage to Ecosystems

    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.

  • White House Advances New NEPA Rules. Will They Stick?

    The White House Council on Environmental Quality proposed long-awaited regulations Friday that would streamline permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act. Federal agencies would need to meet set deadlines for environmental reviews — as required by this year's debt ceiling deal — but also consider how energy projects impact climate change and communities historically overburdened by pollution. Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, described the draft as "meaningful" but "also fairly modest and incremental."

  • The United States Shifts Gears in the Asia-Pacific – Analysis

    The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a milestone on the path towards the electric vehicle (EV) era — a monumental shift with the potential to remodel not just the US automotive industry, but the global landscape. Washington is working to establish alternatives to China’s control over critical mineral resources within the Asia-Pacific region, potentially recalibrating the global EV industry.

  • Climate Economics Crosses the Border

    Valuing the cost of climate pollution is tremendously useful for policymakers as they weigh the benefits and drawbacks of potential strategies to mitigate climate change. Earlier this year, Canada update its climate-damage valuations for the first time since 2016. While some politicians have mischaracterized the update for political gain, in reality this commonsense update reflects the latest advances in science and economics.

  • Chevron Deference is Superior to West Virginia Skepticism

    If the Supreme Court next term overrules Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the era of “Chevron deference” will have been displaced by what ought to be called the era of “West Virginia skepticism.”  There is, to be sure, some parallelism in the structure of the two doctrines. In simplest terms, each is offered up as a two-step test. Still, much remains to be clarified in the implementation of West Virginia. A recent study by Natasha Brunstein of the Institute for Policy Integrity found that lower court “judges have taken vastly different approaches to defining and applying the doctrine—even within the same circuit—illustrating that many judges view the doctrine as little more than a grab bag of factors at their disposal.”

  • EPA Deals Death Knell to Trump-Era Cost-Benefit Rule

    EPA is delivering the coup de grace to one of the Trump administration's most ambitious — and contested — Clean Air Act initiatives. With a newly released final rule, Administrator Michael Regan completed the job of rescinding a 2020 set of requirements subjecting all significant new air rules to an assessment of their expected costs and benefits. Backing an end to the requirements was the Institute for Policy Integrity, a New York University think tank then headed by Richard Revesz. Revesz is now in charge of the White House regulations shop housed in the Office of Management and Budget.