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Many experts expect the subsequent updates could lead to estimates of climate damages well higher than $100 per ton. “A great deal of research suggests that these interim values are a lower bound for the damages of greenhouse gas emissions. The administration is taking a careful and legally sound approach in providing that a rigorous scientific process determine further updates,” argues Richard Revesz.

In addition to the federal centers of power, state and local governments play major roles in shaping U.S. climate policy, as do business interests and other stakeholders, including community and non-governmental organizations. We provide more detail on the workings of the three federal centers of power with respect to climate policy, followed by short discussions of influence wielded by states and other stakeholders.

The U.S. climate policy story has four important, interrelated dimensions: action at the federal level, action at the state level, policy innovation, and technical innovation. The federal story is one of legislative failure but some executive and innovation success, while the state story is one of variegated progress.

With the new Administration in Washington, many think tanks and advocacy groups are making their voices heard on crafting mandatory climate disclosure regulations. A new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU and the Environmental Defense Fund advocates adoption by the SEC of a climate disclosure mandate.

Days before a Biden administration working group releases an “interim” value for the social cost of carbon used to estimate the benefits of greenhouse gas reduction measures, Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, is urging a broad reform of the SCC and the associated “discount rate” of future impacts in order to bolster the value of new EPA GHG rules.

Some environmental groups are vowing to seek rigorous National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental reviews of planned transmission lines, even when they are built to facilitate low- or zero-carbon power, a strategy that may frustrate the Biden administration’s effort to accelerate reviews for such projects. “Unlike the Trump administration, which sought to prioritize environmentally undesirable projects and run roughshod on NEPA requirements in the process, the Biden administration is seeking to prioritize environmentally desirable projects but respect NEPA safeguards,” argues Ricky Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.

Jointly penned by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, a new report said the current quality of firms' climate risk disclosures is not at the same level as that for other forms of risks that publicly traded companies routinely disclose. It calls on the U.S. government to improve and mandate its current disclosure regime because it will "help not only investors deciding how to allocate capital across corporations but also the corporations themselves."

Guidance on voluntary disclosures the Securities and Exchange Commission issued in 2010 hasn’t led to “comparable, specific, and decision-useful” climate-risk reporting from companies, the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity and the Environmental Defense Fund said in the report released Thursday. “We’re trying to make a clear case for why additional regulation is needed, despite the popularity of voluntary programs, despite the existing guidance,” said report co-author Jack Lienke, the regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Legal and economic experts, including NYU's Richard Revesz, are urging the Biden administration to couple its year-long process to bolster the federal government's approach to the social cost of carbon climate damages metric with a broader overhaul of cost-benefit review procedures, arguing such an approach could shield any changes from legal challenges.

The Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University School of Law is out with a new report aimed at helping EPA and other federal agencies improve climate-related environmental justice (EJ) analyses, in line with a new executive order (EO) from President Joe Biden seeking to elevate both issues. The report also assesses the original Clinton-era EO issued in 1994 on EJ and provides detailed guidance for how agencies can conduct better EJ analysis going forward in line with Biden’s goals.