In the News

Updating its SC-GHG to incorporate the latest knowledge in climate science and economics was a major analytical success for EPA, and using it to evaluate the benefits of the agency’s new environmental regulations will produce tangible results in the fight against climate change. But transforming the numbers from an analytical step forward to a powerful weapon in the fight against climate change requires rapid, widespread adoption. The Institute for Policy Integrity is already encouraging other agencies and state governmental bodies to use EPA’s estimates through comments in regulatory proceedings. Whether those efforts — and others like them — are successful will largely depend on political factors and the appetite of regulators to seriously and rationally consider the damage that climate change will continue to inflict.

To achieve the CLCPA's climate and justice goals, sectors other than electricity also require sustained focus and accountability, as well as incentives and dedicated funding. Placing a modest regulatory cost on harmful activities, like traffic congestion and climate pollution, can help fund cleaner, more beneficial alternatives fairly and efficiently.

The Institute for Policy Integrity hosts a May 13 webinar featuring researchers discussing their work on energy access and equity.

To help achieve the state’s ambitious GHG emission reduction targets, New York is preparing to propose its own version of a cap-and-trade program called New York Cap and Invest. But if New York is to successfully comply with the CLCPA, it cannot rely on New York Cap and Invest alone. New York will need a well-designed scheme of programs and regulatory mechanisms to not only reduce GHG emissions but to also ensure that disadvantaged communities see real air quality improvements. 

The court’s March 29, 2024, decision in Sierra Club v. FERC held that “FERC enjoys broad discretion” when it considers requests by pipeline companies to extend their timeline to put a project into service. However, the D.C. Circuit has previously offered course corrections to FERC in pipeline cases, and FERC still faces legal vulnerability with its current approach. Al Huang, a panelist at the 2023 Roundtable, recently called on FERC to issue “comprehensive guidance … to aid both FERC and permit applicants, and increase the legal durability of the Commission’s decisions.”

"At FERC’s EJ Roundtable one year ago, we called for the Commission to publish comprehensive guidance on environmental justice. Such guidance would aid both FERC and permit applicants, and increase the legal durability of the Commission’s decisions. It would also make good on commitments from FERC and the Biden Administration to center environmental justice in policy decisionmaking... One year later, however, the Commission has not taken substantial steps towards the goal of integrating environmental justice into its processes and decision making. We continue to see projects that are not in the public interest approved, leaving behind vulnerable communities.” - Al Huang, Director of Environmental Justice, Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law.

Though prior "good neighbor" regulations, such as CSAPR and its predecessor, the Clean Air Interstate Rule, have focused on power plants, the Clean Air Act does not prevent the agency from looking at other sources that contribute significantly to ozone pollution, said Jason Schwartz, legal director at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity. "We are now in a world where actually some of the most cost-effective opportunities for reductions are in different industries," Schwartz said.

The Biden administration directed agency policymakers on Thursday to more heavily weigh how their economic regulations will help or hurt worker safety, children’s health, and consumer prices decades into the future. The 93-page memo instructs agencies to pay more attention to how the costs and benefits of their regulations vary by person… “Costs accrue for the most part in the short term,” said Max Sarinsky, an attorney that studies regulation at New York University School of Law. “But the benefits accrue decades or more into the future.”

Environmental justice organizations and local municipalities had an opportunity to learn about a new resource designed to help them identify, navigate, and pursue federal funding for environmental justice by attending a webinar on Monday. This webinar introduced attendees to the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (TCTAC) for EPA Region 2, from Harlem to Newark. Among the speakers was Al Huang, Environmental Justice Director at the New York University School of Law Institute for Policy Integrity

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law strengthened the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority to site interstate transmission projects that have been rejected or not acted upon by states. Used appropriately, this authority can help the United States build the transmission infrastructure necessary to achieve President Joe Biden’s goal of fully decarbonizing the electricity grid by 2035.