Menu
Institute for Policy Integrity logo

In the News

  • This Is How To Rebut Major Questions Arguments

    In a forthcoming law review article, Richard Revesz and I contend that agencies should preemptively rebut challenges under the major questions doctrine by drawing parallels to past agency actions. A recent federal regulation offers a template for this analysis. In its pollution standards for new vehicles issued last week, the Environmental Protection Agency extensively responded to claims that the rule triggers the major questions doctrine. EPA’s analysis is comprehensive and well-researched.

  • Long-Delayed Carbon Metric Debated on Capitol Hill and in Courts

    Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said both the EPA’s $190 figure and the $51 interim figure from the interagency working group were developed through a rigorous process, so other agencies should be able to use either number without worrying about their trustworthiness. The EPA’s numbers are “the better choice moving forward,” Sarinsky said, because they draw on newer evidence than the working group’s.

  • New York Must Pass the Climate Change Superfund Act

    No amount of hoarded wealth will save corporations from facing the disastrous consequences of climate change. The same is true for state legislators. New Yorkers have nothing to fear from the Climate Change Superfund Act. According to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law, these fees would not increase consumer gas prices. This is due to the fact that they are a fixed cost, rather than a current variable cost of production. Market forces of supply and demand discourage cost increase, which would lead consumers to bring their business elsewhere.

  • A Contentious Climate Change Rule Will Soon Be Considered By the SEC

    The Institute for Policy Integrity issued a letter in support of the rule proposal in June 2022 in response to criticism that they SEC rules are overrreaching. “Throughout its history, the SEC has repeatedly required disclosure of information that, while not financial on its face, is nevertheless relevant to investors’ assessment of a registrant’s future financial prospects,” the letter said.

  • Why EPA Can Cut Carbon Pollution from Power Plants Without Sacrificing Grid Reliability

    Roughly 1,800 regulators and other energy professionals gathered for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit last week where state and federal regulators had a lot to say about the clean energy transition, grid reliability and new EPA rules. On a panel with state public utility commissioners, EPA’s Air Office lead, Joseph Goffman, discussed how to navigate greenhouse gas pollution-reduction rules while maintaining adequate energy resources during the energy transition. He also listened to their concerns about the transition’s pace and scope.

  • Earth Matters: No Technological Miracles Needed to Address Climate; Green New Deal Push Relaunches

    According to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law: The assessments that have guided U.S. LNG export authorizations over the past half-decade of the industry’s startling growth are not capturing the full scope of climate harms those exports are causing — or the economic harms those emissions will create in the country or around the world... And these findings aren’t based on a novel methodology for calculating benefits and harms of the LNG industry, said Max Sarinsky, the report’s co-author... Instead, ​“we just took DOE’s existing analyses and had them talk to each other,” he explained.

  • Climate: Inaction Costs More Than Strong Measures

    Two thirds of economists specializing in climate change surveyed by the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University put the cost of the ecological transition into perspective in the face of the future consequences of global warming. They were only 50% in 2015. (Translated from the original French)

  • Final RMP Rule Draws Scrutiny Over Cost-Benefit Analysis for Key Mandates

    EPA’s newly final Risk Management Program (RMP) update is facing criticism from all sides over its cost-benefit calculations, especially for novel mandates to consider climate impacts and safer technologies -- provisions that industry says will be unworkably expensive but which pro-regulatory advocates say carry even greater benefits than the rule assumes. For instance, Dena Adler, senior attorney at the environmental law group Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, told Inside EPA in a March 4 interview that the final rule is an indication that EPA has improved its “awareness of the climate related hazards” facing chemical sites, and called it an “essential first step” in the agency’s efforts to address those dangers. However, she emphasized although she sees the March 1 RMP rule as a step in the right direction, the agency’s cost estimates still do not fully capture the “hard to quantify” costs of chemical accidents, such as potential health risks from chemical exposures in communities close to facilities, “lost productivity at affected facilities, emergency response costs,” and “environmental damage,” among others.

  • The SEC Votes This Week on Controversial Climate Change Rule: Here’s What’s at Stake

    Gensler said the SEC has received over 15,000 comment letters on its proposal, the most ever received for a single proposal... “Throughout its history, the SEC has repeatedly required disclosure of information that, while not financial on its face, is nevertheless relevant to investors’ assessment of a registrant’s future financial prospects,” a letter jointly submitted to the SEC from The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law and the Environmental Defense Fund stated.

  • OMB Finalizes Guidance for Reviewing Rules’ Effects on Ecosystems

    The White House Office of Management & Budget (OMB) is finalizing new guidance about how to weigh federal regulations’ effects on ecosystem services, defined as “contributions to human welfare from the environment or ecosystems,” with observers saying the guide will make EPA and other agencies less likely to overlook important benefits of rules. Institute for Policy Integrity senior attorney Max Sarinsky said that both the ecosystem guide and recently finalized A-4 guidance help to counter a historically flawed focus of regulatory analysis on easier-to-quantify compliance costs while ignoring benefits that can sometimes be harder to quantify.