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TGP representatives themselves project annual emissions from the East 300 project at more than 2.34 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year. The Institute for Policy Integrity, a non-partisan organization at New York University School of Law, used a federal government model to calculate that the project would be responsible for damage of more than $131 million per year.

With experts worldwide calling on governments to transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic levels of climate change, the Biden Administration is in the midst of reconsidering the federal government’s oil, gas, and coal leasing programs. Reforms to these programs could bring U.S. energy policy closer in line with climate reality by reducing the extraction of fossil fuels from public lands.

Was there another choice for DOI? Yes. The Louisiana decision “doesn’t force the administration to move forward with any particular lease sale,” Max Sarinsky of the New York University School of Law told The Guardian, though he added that if the sale were postponed, “I’m almost certain they would be sued by oil and gas interests.”

Just four days after landmark climate talks in Scotland in which Joe Biden vowed the US will “lead by example” in tackling dangerous global heating, the president’s own administration is providing a jarring contradiction – the largest ever sale of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico. But legal experts say the court decision doesn’t, in itself, prevent the administration from stopping or delaying a scheduled lease sale, or from scaling it back. “The Louisiana opinion doesn’t force the administration to move forward with any particular lease sale – the Department of Interior still has discretion over that,” said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the New York University School of Law. “If they were to postpone, I’m almost certain they would be sued by oil and gas interests, but that’s another matter.”

Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, a New York University think tank, said the decisions are likely to set a precedent and steer planning in New York’s power sector by “tamping down expectations” about whether the future promise of clean hydrogen can justify the development of natural gas plants today.

New York regulators are, for the first time, denying Clean Air Act operating permits for two proposed new natural gas-fired power plants over climate change concerns after regulators determined that the projects would violate a new state law to cut greenhouse gas emissions. According to Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, this is not the first time the state has cited the CLCPA to deny a permit, having rejected water and pipeline permits already, but it is the first denial of air permits, in this case Title V operating permits under the Clean Air Act.

Federal officials have tied a certain, yet undefined concern over climate change impact to a proposal to develop and upgrade natural gas compressor stations in North Jersey. Attorneys representing New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity claim the staff's assessment regarding climate change fails to aid in a meaningful review of the public benefits of the project. The attorneys said the climate damage costs if the stations run continuously could total more than $131 million a year based on estimates from the federal government's Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.

The cases challenging the Trump NEPA rules aimed to ensure that agencies would continue to assess factors such as the cumulative and indirect impacts of major projects like pipelines. "The cases are presumably not moot, because this is not a full rollback," said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

FERC staff said issues like the social cost of carbon methodology, how the commission decides if a project is needed and what a "significant" amount of GHG emissions is are being tackled in the agency's broad review of its gas policy, and it is inappropriate for staff to consider them in the East 300 Upgrade EIS. The EIS underscores how important it is for FERC to change its policy statement on natural gas infrastructure, according to Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney with New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity.

According to the analysis, the tunnel project and pipeline could contribute an additional 27 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere annually, and generate $41 billion in climate damages between 2027 and 2070. The testimony was provided by Peter Erickson, a senior scientist and climate policy director for the Stockholm Environment Institute, as well as by Peter Howard, an economic policy expert at New York University’s School of Law.