In the News

Some legal and regulatory experts are skeptical that EPA’s methane rules — once they are finalized — could be the best path for the red states to reinvigorate their challenge to the Biden administration’s emissions metric. "I don’t think EPA would have much to worry about on the social cost of greenhouse gases front," said Richard Revesz, a law professor and director of New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. But he noted that any EPA rule of "any consequence" is going to be challenged in court.

Critics of PJM’s minimum price argued that it increased costs to consumers by imposing a barrier for renewable energy. Wind power has been able to bid well below other sources of electricity in competitive markets. “[The] indiscriminate treatment of all state policies as inefficient and uneconomic was both legally inappropriate and economically unsound,” said Sarah Ladin, an energy attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill clarifies FERC’s authority by giving the commission the ability to overturn state objections, transmission analysts said. “This clarifies the scope of preemptive authority available to FERC,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “In my corner of the world it is a meaningful policy change.”

"There has been a vague recognition for a long time that big transmission lines are hard to develop and get built," said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law who focuses on state energy and climate policy. "I think recognition is dawning that not only is this a bottleneck, this is a bottleneck for which our solutions aren't entirely clear." State electricity planners may also have to weigh siting risks of major transmission projects more heavily when comparing them against potential alternatives, Gundlach said.

Adding to the uncertainty is the US Supreme Court's recent decision to hear a sweeping challenge to EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases from stationary sources, although legal experts expect the court will focus on novel aspects of a since-abandoned 2016 rule that created a cap-and-trade-like system for CO2 from power plants. "That issue is not present in the methane rule," New York University School of Law professor Richard Revesz said.

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.

EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act to set emissions standards for new fossil fuel-fired heating appliances used in millions of residential and commercial buildings that cumulatively generate “substantial quantities” of greenhouse gases and smog-forming pollution, according to a new analysis from the Institute for Policy Integrity.

“Fossil fuel-powered appliances ubiquitous in residential and commercial buildings collectively emit almost three times more smog-forming nitrogen oxides than the nation’s gas-fired power plants, and almost as much planet-warming carbon dioxide,” IPI says in an Oct. 25 statement announcing a new report that makes the cases for such regulation.

Across the nation, severe weather fueled by climate change is pushing aging electrical systems past their limits, often with deadly results. “There is no question that climatic changes are happening that directly affect the operation of the power grid,” said Justin Gundlach, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank at New York University Law School. “What you still haven’t seen … is a [state] commission saying: 'Isn’t climate the through line in all of this? Let’s examine it in an open-ended way. Let’s figure out where the information takes us and make some decisions.’ ”