In the News

On November 8th, Policy Integrity hosted a webinar that brought together researchers and policy experts for a discussion about the complex task of decarbonizing industrial sectors like steel, cement, and chemical manufacturing. The transition away from fossil fuel use has been immensely challenging in these areas, and new research is critical for identifying the most promising strategies. The discussion revolved around not only technological advancements but also policy tools and efforts to understand and navigate the socioeconomic implications of this significant transformation.

Court fights over proposed Gulf Coast gas export facilities are exerting new pressure on federal energy regulators to reevaluate whether it is in the public’s best interest to ship fossil fuels to foreign countries as the world confronts climate change. Section 3 of the [Natural Gas Act] tells FERC it can approve or deny an application for siting an LNG facility, but the statute doesn’t provide a legal standard for how to make that decision, said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, said there will be some factors on an agency's side as well during future litigation. He said that for one thing, the estimates, which have already been used in many rules and other decisions, go through an extensive process before finalization that incorporates a public comment period, a peer review process and the best available science at the time. "To win an argument that the standard is high, you have to show that it's arbitrary and capricious to use these numbers," Sarinsky said. "So to say that it's arbitrary and capricious to use Nobel Prize-winning work seems a little difficult to me."

Three agencies that are the backbone of U.S. banking regulation have developed joint guidance, released today, on how banks should manage the monetary risks of the climate crisis. Previously, EDF partnered with NYU School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity to submit joint comments to all three agencies – the FDIC, the Federal Reserve Board and the OCC. 

After stumbling twice at the Supreme Court, Republicans still want to make the case that the administration has its math wrong on climate change's financial toll. The justices "make it very clear that you can't challenge these valuations in the abstract," said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity. "You have to challenge them in their application."

Supporters of a conference on capacity accreditation approaches for grid resources include Southern California Edison, Advanced Energy United and the Colorado Public Utilities Commission chair.

Breaking the law soon could get more expensive for companies and people who violate U.S. environmental regulations. That’s based on a White House directive from last month that looked at a complex calculation known as the social cost of greenhouse gases. Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, co-wrote a 2021 report that said basing penalty calculations in part on the social cost of greenhouse gases “internalize the climate-related harms from noncompliance, thereby punishing violators based on the damage caused and efficiently deterring future violations.” Sarinsky told E&E News in an interview that agencies may not be confined to considering traditional factors such as inflation when setting penalties.

Mark Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, also applauded the White House's move, but pushed the administration to update its carbon cost estimates. Agencies "must be aware that the current federal metrics have grown outdated and grossly underestimate the true cost of climate pollution," Sarinsky said in a press release.

Jack Lienke, IPI's regulatory policy director who moderated the panel, recalled the group's conference last fall — held just after the IRA's passage and a few months after the Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia v. EPA, which cited the major questions doctrine to block EPA power plant rules premised on shifting to cleaner generation. At that point, "the conventional take seemed to be — the era of regulating has ended, the era of spending has begun; goodbye neoliberalism, hello industrial policy, etc.," Lienke said.

The GREET model will also need retooling to manage the broader complexities of measuring the greenhouse gas emissions of hydrogen production, many commenters to the Treasury Department have noted. For example, the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law has asked the Treasury Department to work quickly with DOE to develop a successor model that can accurately assess the ​“marginal emissions” impact of electrolyzers using a mix of clean and dirty grid power.