In the News

A coalition of the Environmental Defense Fund, Food & Water Watch, the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, and others was among the groups that commented on FERC's gas pipeline certificate policy. Their comments suggested that FERC use the social cost of greenhouse gases as the best approach to assessing impacts of a proposed project's emissions.

FERC has yet to act on the 92.5-mile, 250 MMcf/d North Bakken Expansion Project, which would provide incremental firm capacity from six gas processing plants to a proposed interconnect with Northern Border Pipeline Company. Adding a possible hurdle in that docket, the Institute for Policy Integrity has faulted FERC's environmental assessment for a failure to project indirect GHG emissions or monetize emissions.

Columbia Law School's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity and State Energy & Environmental Impact Center are hosting a May 27 webinar to examine state efforts to move away from natural gas appliances to lower-emitting products. “Navigating this transformation successfully will be a monumental endeavor--one that the federal government can support, but cannot undertake itself. It is a task for the states,” the groups say.

FERC almost never denies (pipeline) applications. As long as there’s a contract in place they approve it,” said Max Sarinsky, an attorney with New York University’s Institute for Public Policy. “They have an obligation to review the impacts of these pipelines, both beneficial and adverse, and that’s not something they’ve been doing with climate impacts.

EPA faces the daunting task of tackling multiple regulations to meet the administration's ambitious climate goals. Finalizing passenger vehicle standards will likely be one of EPA's heaviest policy lifts, said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University's School of Law. "The car standards have to be done quickly," Revesz said in an interview, noting any delay could mean they will apply to fewer vehicle model years.

While it may be a while before the precise outlines of EPA’s upcoming methane rules are clear, legal experts are already noting that the Senate vote makes EPA’s task easier by essentially restoring the 2016 Obama era NSPS as a baseline for further action without the need for a fresh comment process to simply reverse the Trump rule. “You can imagine the whole process of getting this done through the comment-and-rule process could take the majority of Biden’s first term,” New York University School of Law Institute for Policy Integrity Director Richard Revesz told the Wall Street Journal.

74%: that's the share of economists around the world who now say it’s necessary to take “immediate and drastic” action on climate change, up from 50% in 2015, a recent survey shows. The Ph.D. economists, polled by New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity in February, came to an “overwhelming consensus that the costs of inaction on climate change are higher than the costs of action, and that immediate, aggressive emissions reductions are economically desirable,” the institute said in a report released last month.

Climate change also threatens the economic wellbeing of western states. Recently, the Institute for Public Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law conducted a survey of 738 economists, Gauging Economic Consensus on Climate Change, which found that the benefits of taking action on climate change far outweigh the costs.

“The only way to put this in context is to compare it to the cost of inaction, which is monumental in terms of public health, extreme weather events, climate refugees and economic destruction,” said Anne Kelly, vice president of government relations at Ceres. A survey of 730 global economists published this week by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law showed that the benefits of acting on climate far outweigh the price.

The climate crisis is more than a political topic of discussion. Economists are already outlining the potential for worsening inequality, trillions of dollars in climate-related damages, and depressed global growth. According to the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law’s latest survey, about 74% of economists agree that “immediate and drastic” action is needed to cut emissions.