In the News

Although cap-and-trade programs for government permits to emit carbon dioxide occasionally make headline news, the average American may not realize that billions of dollars’ worth of government permits are auctioned or traded in a wide variety of industries, from broadcasting to construction to fishing.

A cascade of courtroom standoffs are beginning to slow, and even reverse, the EPA rollbacks thanks to the administration’s ‘disregard for the law.’ “The Trump administration has been sloppy and careless, they’ve shown significant disrespect for rule of law and courts have called them on it,” said Richard Revesz, a professor at the New York University school of Law.

The Trump administration’s new draft plan for offshore drilling represents a colossal shift in policy by proposing to make nearly all U.S. coastal waters available for oil and gas exploration. The administration has framed this proposal as a way to achieve “energy dominance,” but this claim doesn’t add up: The United States is already the world’s number one oil and natural gas producer. What is clear is that the administration’s approach entails major environmental and social risks and ignores basic economic facts, making it a terrible deal for the American public.

Late last year, Rick Perry’s Department of Energy issued a notice of proposed rulemaking asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to bail out beleaguered coal and nuclear plants.Yesterday, FERC officially responded: Thanks, but no thanks. “DOE’s bungling of this from the start (no coordination, proposal unlike a normal 206 proceeding, Perry’s performance at House Energy hearing) very likely hurt its ability to get near-term policy in the direction it wanted (even if less than cost-of-service),” Tweeted Avi Zevin, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Michael Livermore, an environmental law professor at the University of Virginia, said that “based entirely on the Department of Interior’s own analysis, drilling off the coast of California is a terrible idea.” He cited a section of the leasing proposal that found waters off Central California did not meet the government threshold for benefits exceeding the costs of oil drilling.

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.