In the News

Federal investments and procurement choices can either reinforce the status quo, or provide a template for a broader societal shift toward a low-emissions economy. Improved GSA policies could reduce emissions across the entire federal government.

Rushing the process could make the rules more vulnerable to legal challenges. A number of Trump administration rules that were finalized remain in court, where the administration has failed to successfully defend the majority of its policy changes, according to the Institute for Policy Integrity.

The Golden State could steer the country toward an electric future regardless of whether President-elect Joe Biden takes aggressive steps to promote clean cars. "You could see significant progress through a California waiver request and then the piggybacking on California standards by Section 177 states," said Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity and an adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.

Congress enacted a law in 2005 that granted the Department of Energy the authority to designate “national interest electric transmission corridors” where new lines are needed, and it gave FERC authority to override state inaction on lines in these corridors. But this law has been ineffective, largely failing to speed up expansion of transmission lines. As shown in a report about to be issued by Columbia’s Center for Global Energy Policy and New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the law can and should be revived.

For decades, there has been a bipartisan consensus that federal agencies should base their decisions on evidence, expertise, and analysis. But under the Trump Administration, inconvenient evidence has often been ignored, experts have been sidelined, and analysis has been misused to intentionally obscure important truths. In this episode, we talk to Prof. Michael Livermore (University of Virginia School of Law) and Prof. Richard Revesz (New York University School of Law) to discuss current challenges as well as considerations for the road ahead. Their new book, Reviving Rationality: Saving Cost-Benefit Analysis for the Sake of the Environment and Our Health, offers analysis on critical aspects of the regulatory process and calls for the reinstatement of expertise, sound cost-benefit analysis, and the rule of law in public administration.

Two amicus briefs -- one from Ricky Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, and another from University of Chicago economics professor Michael Greenstone -- were submitted to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, which is hearing environmental groups’ appeal seeking to vacate the NEPA review by the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation & Enforcement for failing to use the SCC to assess the coal mine’s climate harms.

As one of his biggest steps to tackle climate change, President-elect Joe Biden is expected to undo President Trump's rollback of clean car standards and set new auto emissions rules. But experts have one pressing question for the former vice president: How aggressive will the new tailpipe rules be? "The big-picture question for me is what the eventual standards will look like," said Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

Over 100 environmental safeguards were removed across the past four years. Biden plans to impose stricter environmental standards on industry, a job that would be overseen by his next EPA administrator. Possible picks include Richard Revesz, an NYU Law professor who is considered one of the foremost legal minds in environmental law. Originally from Argentina, he has spent most of his career in academia. But he has managing experience, having served as dean of the NYU law school from 2002 to 2013.

Combating Climate Change with Section 115 of the Clean Air Act: Law and Policy Rationales provides a roadmap for an essential component of such a plan: the Environmental Protection Agency’s international air pollution authority. This new book, which I edited, is the culmination of a decade of collaboration by scholars and lawyers at the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, the Emmett Institute at UCLA, and the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU.

The outcome of Georgia’s runoff election will determine the degree to which President-Elect Joe Biden may be able to count on the Senate’s support in enacting his energy platform, which aims for a carbon-free electricity sector by 2035. Bethany Davis Noll and Richard Revesz, regulatory experts whose work focuses on the legal tools available to presidents to pursue their agendas, take a look at the options available to Biden to pursue his energy agenda with, or without, help from the Senate.