In the News

TGP representatives themselves project annual emissions from the East 300 project at more than 2.34 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. The Institute for Policy Integrity, a non-partisan organization at New York University School of Law, used a federal government model to calculate that the project would be responsible for damage of more than $131 million per year.

Unlike most executive orders that undergo a lengthy and sometimes fractious regulatory process before they are enacted, procurement rules can take effect almost immediately, said Richard L. Revesz, a professor of environmental law at New York University. He called the executive orders “very significant.”

By changing the underlying risk profile of certain insurance products, climate change threatens insurers’ business model. At the same time, insurers also face risk as investors, as insurers’ assets may be overvalued due to unassigned climate risk. Improved data, research and resilience planning can contribute to a more robust and more equitable insurance system, while improving financial disclosure requirements can limit investment risk.

A top White House official says the Biden administration is planning to review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) various federal programs as a way to help speed later review of related low-carbon projects, an effort aimed at easing the challenge officials face as they seek to expedite such projects while also ensuring rigorous reviews. The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) is looking at “ways that programmatic analysis can be used more frequently and effectively by federal agencies,” Jayni Foley Hein, CEQ’s senior director for NEPA, said Oct. 19.

Without a doubt, all environmental rules will be challenged in court and former President Trump dramatically increased the number of conservatives in courts around the country. “From what I’ve observed, [the Biden administration is] being careful,” noted Ricky Revesz, a professor at New York University. “The question isn’t if they get sued. It is what is the probability of winning after litigation.”

Some legal and regulatory experts are skeptical that EPA’s methane rules — once they are finalized — could be the best path for the red states to reinvigorate their challenge to the Biden administration’s emissions metric. "I don’t think EPA would have much to worry about on the social cost of greenhouse gases front," said Richard Revesz, a law professor and director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. But he noted that any EPA rule of "any consequence" is going to be challenged in court.

Critics of PJM’s minimum price argued that it increased costs to consumers by imposing a barrier for renewable energy. Wind power has been able to bid well below other sources of electricity in competitive markets. “[The] indiscriminate treatment of all state policies as inefficient and uneconomic was both legally inappropriate and economically unsound,” said Sarah Ladin, an energy attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill clarifies FERC’s authority by giving the commission the ability to overturn state objections, transmission analysts said. “This clarifies the scope of preemptive authority available to FERC,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “In my corner of the world it is a meaningful policy change.”

The new methane rule goes beyond merely undoing the damage of the Trump years. The proposal is broader than its Obama-era predecessors, and once finalized, will apply to hundreds of thousands of previously unregulated emission sources, like wells, storage tanks, and compressor station. That is because unlike the prior standards, Biden’s rule will cover equipment of all ages. 

We support the SEC’s plan to propose a rule requiring standardized climate risk disclosures. Doing so would further the Commission’s mandate to protect both investors and the public interest. Our forthcoming paper in the N.Y.U. Journal of Legislation and Public Policy provides several recommendations for how the SEC should build its institutional knowledge as it designs and enforces a climate risk disclosure regime.