In the News

In the Dec. 14 press conference, Trump said the government had taken 67 deregulatory actions through Sept. 30 — with an annual savings to society of $570 million — and had imposed just three new regulations. The administration’s cost figures ignore projected benefits for regulations it has blocked, distorting the actual impacts on society, said Denise Grab, a lawyer with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law.

Courts answered several important environmental law questions in 2017, including how the effects of greenhouse gases must be factored into project analyses. In August, a divided D.C. Circuit panel said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission failed to adequately analyze the greenhouse gas emissions impacts of a project that it approved and ordered the agency to redo its environmental review. Ricky Revesz, a law professor at New York University and director of the Institute for Policy Integrity, said the ruling adds to a growing body of case law showing that federal agencies must meaningfully consider the greenhouse gas emission impacts of their policy decisions.

An intensifying debate between the climate change skeptics looking to strike a death blow to federal greenhouse gas restrictions and a growing chorus of electricity and manufacturing companies warning that such a move would backfire could ultimately test who has the most White House clout in setting energy policy. Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, warns that repeal without replacement “could open the floodgates for litigation” and expose power companies that were to be regulated under the Clean Power Plan to “significant and highly uncertain liabilities.”

In the coming weeks, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will announce its response to the Department of Energy’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR). As long as FERC decides to do something, it has to deal with a fundamental issue. The NOPR failed to answer the most critical question: just what is resilience? This question is not just a matter of semantics. Without a precise definition, FERC cannot determine whether the grid is sufficiently resilient, or gauge whether payments or other actions might be warranted.

In future decades, the food we eat, beverages we drink and clothes we wear may all be altered by the warming planet. In the second of two episodes about climate change, Jenny and Lindsey dig into the future impact of global warming on shoppers. They talk with Andrea Illy, Chief Executive Officer of IllyCaffe; Dr. Peter Howard, economics director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University’s School of Law; and Cecilia Strömblad Brännsten, a sustainability business expert at H&M.

Jason Schwartz, a research scholar at New York University School of Law, slammed the Trump administration’s changes to calculations for the social cost of greenhouse gases. “They have begun to manipulate those estimates in ways that are not at all consistent with the best science or economics,” he said. A guide on the social cost of greenhouse gases co-authored by Schwartz and published by NYU’s Institute for Policy Integrity argues that using a domestic-emissions-only approach doesn’t make sense for the United States or the rest of the world.

Legal and environmental experts warn that the Trump administration’s willingness to eschew scientific consensus for political advantage typifies a worrying trend. “The administration is definitely trying to mess with the numbers to make it look like they’re saving money on these repeals,” Denise Grab, western regional director for the Institute for Policy Integrity, told ThinkProgress. “But they aren’t considering the massive benefits to the public, and the economic and scientific consensus on the substantial benefits that could be achieved by reducing this greenhouse gas pollution.”

In this week’s Material World, Lindsey and Jenny dive into how changes in the environment are showing up in stores and businesses. Dr. Peter Howard, the economics director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU’s School of Law, explains how changing global temperatures and climate could have ripple effects on businesses and shoppers. Bloomberg’s Jordyn Holman discusses her reporting in Puerto Rico after it was hit by Hurricane Maria and the director of the Florida Department of Citrus describes Hurricane Irma’s impact on growers.

Energy storage has long been viewed as the missing piece in the clean-energy puzzle. But the current discussion overlooks the possibility that as batteries and other storage technologies become cheaper and more pervasive, they could instead have the perverse consequence of increasing fossil-fuel use and greenhouse-gas emissions.

Alongside those notices the agency released a cost-benefit analysis, which includes estimates of cost savings and climate benefits that the rule would have provided. The EPA’s original proposals to halt the standards had not included those climate benefits, Bethany Davis Noll, litigation director for New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, said. Now, in the updated analysis, the agency “monkeyed with the numbers” by adjusting the social cost of methane value.