In the News

In making new policy, the EPA needs to exercise a lot of caution: It’s important that the agency checks all its boxes in putting forward new regulations to ensure they aren’t just overturned by the next Republican president. “The Trump administration had this huge loss rate in court for its rollbacks in part because it skipped a lot of those steps and did a lot of terrible analysis,” NYU Law’s regulatory policy director Jack Lienke said. “An agency can’t seem to be doing anything too ambitious or novel,” Lienke explained. “Agencies have to do even more in terms of building up an incredibly detailed record, cataloging exactly why they have authority to do this, and why the benefits of doing it outweigh the costs. They’re up against a more hostile judiciary.”

Criticisms of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s draft policy read the Natural Gas Act far too narrowly, ignoring both statutory design and the Commission’s longstanding consideration of environmental impacts in pipeline certification. As thirty legal scholars, including the author, detail in a comment letter filed with FERC yesterday, the Commission has broad authority to consider climate effects in pipeline certificate proceedings.

The Trump administration revoked California’s waiver in 2019, arguing that it should not set standards for other states. The decision was the most serious manifestation of President Donald Trump’s resentment of California’s environmental leadership, says Richard Revesz of New York University.

Environmental lawyers are urging federal officials to do more to protect the public from gas stoves' emissions, saying the pollution is dangerous and not adequately regulated. In a new report, researchers at the Institute for Policy Integrity said the stoves should be sold with warning labels similar to those on portable generators warning of carbon monoxide poisoning, the authors said. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) should also start public education campaigns about the dangers of stove emissions, they added. "Something needs to be done. We know that [gas stoves] are dangerous. You can't just ignore it," said Laura Figueroa, a co-author of the report and a legal fellow at the institute. "The CPSC ... is in a position to address these dangers, and we think they should take action," she added.

FERC on Thursday proposed changing transmission planning and cost allocation processes in the first in what may be a series of initiatives to help build out the grid in response to electrification and the shift to renewable generation. Sarah Ladin, senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said the proposal was “a modest but important step toward more efficient planning that can facilitate decarbonization.”

Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity, praises the changes CEQ made in the rule, noting they restore “several key NEPA requirements in place for over 40 years starting in 1978, in the form they were in.” It also removes “provisions that were added in 2020 that not only would have weakened environmental review but also were in violation of the statute . . . and how it was interpreted by the courts.” Sarinsky expects facial litigation over the phase 1 rule but notes challengers may face standing and ripeness hurdles as environmental groups did in seeking to challenge the 2020 rule.

In February, U.S. District Judge James D. Cain Jr. of the Western District of Louisiana, agreed with Louisiana and nine other states, issuing an order blocking the use of the interim metric. The states told Cain, who was appointed by Trump, that the metric was arbitrary and would boost the cost of producing energy and hike regulatory costs for states. At the time, Max Sarinsky, an attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law School, said Cain’s injunction might not survive.

An academic center that supports tough environmental rules is pressing the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) to address risks gas cooking stoves pose to public health, opening another front against the fossil fuel’s use as various state and local governments seek to limit gas-fired appliances over climate change concerns.

Carefully orchestrated comment and complaint campaigns can be a powerful, low-risk tool at communities’ disposal, and the organizers and lawyers convened by the Critical Legal Empowerment conference provide important insight into how to get the most out of them.

Because the mining project’s [GHG] emissions comprised 0.44% of the annual global total, Interior concluded that the project would have “no significant impact” on the climate. In doing so, Interior rejected established methodologies such as the social cost of greenhouse gases that would allow for a more precise assessment of climate damage from the mine expansion. This week, the Ninth Circuit held that Interior’s analysis was insufficient.