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LNG supporters tout it as a win for climate, pointing to the pivotal role natural gas played in dethroning King Coal from the U.S. grid. As trade group API put it in its protest of the LNG pause: ​“U.S. LNG is critical for accelerating global emissions reductions by displacing higher-emitting fuels.” There’s one problem with that: There’s no guarantee that LNG shipments actually displace coal. “There’s really been no mechanism in place to ensure that [exports] displace dirtier sources and not cleaner sources,” said Max Sarinsky, an adjunct professor at New York University School of Law, in a previous Canary Media feature on the subject.

A New York University study found that the estimated climate costs of continuing to export LNG outweigh the economic benefits for American households. "Under all scenarios evaluated, we found the gross climate damage greatly exceeded economic benefits," said Minhong Xu, an economist who co-authored the study.

“[O]ur findings provide a potential basis for DOE to rationally conclude that future export applications do not serve the public interest. At a minimum, our analysis supports DOE’s efforts to more closely scrutinize export applications and provides important data points for the agency’s consideration,” said one Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University analysis.

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity hosts a Feb. 7 event about modeling the energy transition, during which researchers share findings to help guide energy policy.

It stands to reason that NHTSA should use the best information possible to set CAFE standards. But, in NHTSA’s enabling statute, the U.S. Congress has made sure that NHTSA cannot do so. The statute pulls wool over the agency’s eyes in two key ways.

“There’s absolutely no reason climate should not be considered as part of the public interest,” said Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. The change is a long overdue update for the 2019 life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions that concluded US LNG exports are likely to reduce global emissions on a per-unit basis because of an assumption that LNG is replacing other fossil fuel sources, Sarinsky said.

Max Sarinsky, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, said if the Energy Department updates its analytical assumptions for gas, it could significantly change its calculus on approving new projects. But what would happen if the U.S. didn’t ship LNG? “The harder piece of it is thinking through more seriously how exporting gas will affect the energy mix globally — and particularly in the countries that we’re exporting to — and what that could mean for the pace of renewables going forward,” said Sarinsky. Sarinsky of NYU and his colleague, Minhong Xu, released a report Friday that tallied the climate damages of expanded U.S. LNG exports using two sets of social cost of greenhouse gas metrics — the administration’s interim figures and updated EPA values.

The Biden administration's decision to halt new LNG exports may bolster pending lawsuits against the government's approvals of proposed LNG facilities — and could face its own hurdles in court. For projects with export approvals and lawsuits that pre-date the Biden administration's pause, courts' consideration of DOE's review in those cases may be limited, said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. "Technically speaking, this announcement is outside the records of those approvals," he said. "But contextually, it's in the atmosphere. It might give judges a little bit more pause."

As 2023 drew to a close, EPA sharply increased its estimates for what climate change costs society. A higher carbon value can help tip the scales in favor of a stronger regulatory option that delivers greater net benefits... “Agencies often leave a more stringent option on the table, even if their own analysis finds that it would yield greater net benefits,” said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this weekend took action that is expected to justify stricter climate regulations. Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, said that technically, a future president could prevent agencies from using the Biden administration’s social cost values “with the stroke of a pen.” But he also said that doing so could make any rules issued by that administration legally vulnerable.