In the News

Today, the safe transportation and storage of carbon dioxide is shaping the public debate. “There aren’t many sequestration projects that exist yet,” Derek Sylvan, with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, told Jean. “So, it’s especially important for the next wave of projects to get extra scrutiny until all the necessary safety precautions are well understood.”

“I think that this is a really critical juncture,” said Derek Sylvan, strategic director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. “There aren’t many sequestration projects that exist yet. So, it’s especially important for the next wave of projects to get extra scrutiny until all the necessary safety precautions are well understood.”

A lawsuit challenging a natural gas expansion project on the East Coast could change how federal regulators assess state climate policies. “If the D.C. Circuit doesn’t step in, state ratepayers are going to end up paying twice,” said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank based at New York University School of Law. “They’ll end up paying more as the states are transitioning away from gas and electrifying building and heating and other uses.”

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity stated the act is “burdensome, irrational, and legally questionable” for several reasons.

While ecosystems have sometimes appeared in the cost-benefit assessments that agencies must write to support their rules, policies and projects, there has never been a governmentwide directive or guidance for doing that accounting. As a result, ecosystem values are treated as secondary to more easily quantified benefits, Richard Revesz, administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Integrtity, along with OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality proposed long-awaited regulations Friday that would streamline permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act. Federal agencies would need to meet set deadlines for environmental reviews — as required by this year's debt ceiling deal — but also consider how energy projects impact climate change and communities historically overburdened by pollution. Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, described the draft as "meaningful" but "also fairly modest and incremental."

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a milestone on the path towards the electric vehicle (EV) era — a monumental shift with the potential to remodel not just the US automotive industry, but the global landscape. Washington is working to establish alternatives to China’s control over critical mineral resources within the Asia-Pacific region, potentially recalibrating the global EV industry.

Valuing the cost of climate pollution is tremendously useful for policymakers as they weigh the benefits and drawbacks of potential strategies to mitigate climate change. Earlier this year, Canada update its climate-damage valuations for the first time since 2016. While some politicians have mischaracterized the update for political gain, in reality this commonsense update reflects the latest advances in science and economics.

A proposed update to decades-old White House guidance on regulatory cost-benefit analysis is sparking competing views, as regulated industries and other critics argue the plan is too sweeping and would enable overly aggressive rules but environmentalists broadly embrace the proposal while seeking further changes. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a coalition of over a dozen other environmental groups, including the Institute for Policy Integrity, tout the proposal for reflecting the “evolving state of economic and scientific knowledge [that] marks a substantial improvement over the existing and outdated Circular A-4.”

Rising sea levels, hotter temperatures, more disease and illnesses, and damage from more intense storms are all on the horizon. Right now, New Yorkers are on the hook for all of those costs. Despite the governor’s rightful efforts to protect the public last week, it was her Administration that earlier this year blocked a Senate plan in the state budget that would have shifted those costs onto the fabulously profitable biggest oil companies. The bill builds in protections so these costs wouldn’t fall back on consumers, according to an analysis from the think tank Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law.