In the News

"The question is, do the folks in charge at the Energy Department and does FERC really want to push this and risk the backlash?" said Alexandra Klass, a law professor at the University of Minnesota. "Maybe the answer is yes." A December paper from the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity and Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy concluded that needed long-distance transmission can be developed by applying existing federal legal authorities.

When more renewable energy comes online, power storage facilities that Canada’s reservoirs provide to the U.S. grid should become even more valuable. “There’s this version of Canadian hydro not only being firm (capacity) but being something like a battery. That’s the big picture informing the vision of some policymakers,” said Justin Gundlach, senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Sens. Ed Markey and Tammy Duckworth and Rep. Cori Bush, flanked by leading environmental justice advocates, unveiled legislation on Thursday that would create an interagency task force to map environmental justice communities "based on cumulative impacts." The Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law released its own report on improving environmental justice mapping.

Customers were at the center of a panel discussion last week, hosted by the Institute for Policy Integrity and the Environmental Defense Fund, that highlighted what can happen when new state climate laws conflict with those currently governing fossil fuels. The discussion stemmed from research by Justin Gundlach and Elizabeth Stein, which casts light on policies under New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) that are inconsistent with other state polices that support residential customer access to natural gas.

The Western Energy Alliance, a trade group representing fossil fuel companies operating on federal lands, filed a lawsuit against Biden’s order on Wednesday, saying it was an overreach. But Jayni Foley Hein, natural resources director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, countered that the order is legally sound and was “written very carefully to avoid legal risk.” “It smartly pauses all new leasing, which Interior can do pursuant to multiple laws, and leaves the door open to more permanent curtailment in the future,” she said.

The recent history of developing long-haul pipelines in the U.S. demonstrates what can happen when certain bottlenecks go unaddressed, according to Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney with New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity. "You would absolutely see people who don't like transmission lines use NEPA to say that the agency responsible for siting this transmission line has failed to take the requisite hard look at the impacts, etc., etc. — no question," he said. Gundlach co-authored a recent study that outlined steps FERC could take to facilitate more long-distance, high-voltage direct-current electric transmission lines without waiting on additional legislation.

It will help Mr Biden that the Trump administration was not very adept at administrative law. A tracker by the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think-tank housed at New York University law school, found that 80% of lawsuits against the Trump administration’s regulatory changes were successful. Under a typical administration, that number is only 30%. With a second term, Mr Trump might have waited out some legal challenges and seen his changes to regulation become more entrenched. Yet “because Trump was a one-term president, his whole regulatory output is very shaky, and little of it will survive,” says Richard Revesz of NYU.

A recent report from Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy and New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity looked at how the Energy Department and other regulators might use certain tools to help expand the nation’s transmission grid, a move that is central to reducing carbon emissions from the energy sector. The lead author, Avi Zevin, was recently hired by the Department of Energy as deputy general counsel for energy policy.

Increasing fossil fuel development on public lands comes with serious downsides, according to New York University law professor, Jayni Foley Hein. In an article published in 2018, she argues that the prices private developers pay to extract fossil fuels from public lands do not reflect the external harms of fossil fuel production, such as greenhouse gas emissions.

Getting an accurate value for the social cost of carbon will be vital for much of the Biden administration's environmental agenda, said Jason Schwartz, legal director at the
Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. "It is going to help in undoing all the harmful deregulation to climate regulations during the Trump administration," according to Schwartz.