In the News

Jack Lienke of NYU says the costs of decarbonizing are falling as renewable energy and natural gas are getting cheaper. “This administration will have to grapple with these recent emission trends that show costs are actually even lower than originally thought,” said Lienke.

Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, weighed in on the lawsuit. “Maryland is not asking for much here,” he said. “It doesn’t expect coal plants in surrounding states to install expensive new pollution controls. The plants already have the technology they need. Maryland just wants them to start using that equipment more often, especially during the summer.”

A group of U.S. state attorneys general say they are now acting as one of the primary checks on efforts by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration to weaken environmental protections and back away from action on climate change. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said the state officials are now the core of the “legal resistance” to efforts by the U.S. government to overturn environmental protections.

“There is a real need for the people who live nearby, and for the people who are responding to these accidents, to know what they are going to encounter when they put out the fire, or when people nearby are trying to protect their families,” Noll said. “So now to turn around and cancel those protections — EPA clearly did not think this through, and that is a real danger to public health.”

A Sept. 14 decision of an appeals court establishes an argument that could be tested nationwide in other courts to challenge any fossil fuel-related project that might have climate change effects, said Jayni Foley Hein, policy director at New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. These might include natural gas pipelines, oil sand pipelines, coal railroads, and coal export terminals.

Late last week, a federal court knocked down plans to expand coal mining in the Western US. The ruling fits a pattern of federal courts pushing back against agencies that are trying to gloss over their statutory climate change obligations. “We are more used to seeing decisions like this from the Ninth Circuit, which has been a leader on requiring accounting for climate change. It’s a sign that courts are recognizing the importance of this,” said Jayni Hein, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law.

A major court decision dressing down the federal government for “irrational” consideration of the climate impacts of coal leasing stands to reverberate throughout the Trump administration. “This opinion is significant because it means that future federal agencies cannot just rest on these questionable assumptions and will have to do meaningful analysis as to the actual greenhouse gas emission effects from their leasing decisions,” said Jayni Hein, policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity. “They can’t just conclude that there’s no net effect.”

President Trump is undermining efforts to improve air quality for Americans. His administration has attempted to delay the implementation of new ozone standards adopted by the Environmental Protection Agency in 2015, and it is seeking cuts to the EPA’s budget that would severely compromise the agency’s ability to enforce all air quality standards. For Latinos, the Trump administration is compounding the problem even more, through its efforts to roll back healthcare and its aggressive deportation policies.

A Spanish-language version of this op-ed was published by Univision.

Burcin Unel, senior economist for Institute for Policy Integrity told Utility Dive the social cost of carbon was used in several of the calculations made by the NYPSC in its Track One Reforming the Energy Vision proceedings. With a social cost of carbon-based adder, “the generators’ bids reflect the external costs they impose on society,” she added. “It is technology neutral. Short-term, the price signal will impact the dispatch order. Long-term, it will drive investments that will more cost-effectively reduce carbon.”

A protracted delay in the Trump administration coming up with its own carbon-cost estimate could empower environmentalists pursuing legal challenges to mining, drilling or pipeline projects, said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.