In the News

Some environmental groups are vowing to seek rigorous National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental reviews of planned transmission lines, even when they are built to facilitate low- or zero-carbon power, a strategy that may frustrate the Biden administration’s effort to accelerate reviews for such projects. “Unlike the Trump administration, which sought to prioritize environmentally undesirable projects and run roughshod on NEPA requirements in the process, the Biden administration is seeking to prioritize environmentally desirable projects but respect NEPA safeguards,” argues Ricky Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University.

Jointly penned by the nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund and New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity, a new report said the current quality of firms' climate risk disclosures is not at the same level as that for other forms of risks that publicly traded companies routinely disclose. It calls on the U.S. government to improve and mandate its current disclosure regime because it will "help not only investors deciding how to allocate capital across corporations but also the corporations themselves."

Biden on Tuesday added several policy officials and legal experts to his White House Council on Environmental Quality. Jayni Hein, recently an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law, will become senior director for NEPA and counsel.

Jayni Hein, the new senior director for NEPA and counsel at CEQ, was an adjunct professor of law and the Natural Resources Director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law.

Guidance on voluntary disclosures the Securities and Exchange Commission issued in 2010 hasn’t led to “comparable, specific, and decision-useful” climate-risk reporting from companies, the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity and the Environmental Defense Fund said in the report released Thursday. “We’re trying to make a clear case for why additional regulation is needed, despite the popularity of voluntary programs, despite the existing guidance,” said report co-author Jack Lienke, the regulatory policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Legal and economic experts, including NYU's Richard Revesz, are urging the Biden administration to couple its year-long process to bolster the federal government's approach to the social cost of carbon climate damages metric with a broader overhaul of cost-benefit review procedures, arguing such an approach could shield any changes from legal challenges.

The Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University School of Law is out with a new report aimed at helping EPA and other federal agencies improve climate-related environmental justice (EJ) analyses, in line with a new executive order (EO) from President Joe Biden seeking to elevate both issues. The report also assesses the original Clinton-era EO issued in 1994 on EJ and provides detailed guidance for how agencies can conduct better EJ analysis going forward in line with Biden’s goals.

"The question is, do the folks in charge at the Energy Department and does FERC really want to push this and risk the backlash?" said Alexandra Klass, a law professor at the University of Minnesota. "Maybe the answer is yes." A December paper from the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity and Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy concluded that needed long-distance transmission can be developed by applying existing federal legal authorities.

When more renewable energy comes online, power storage facilities that Canada’s reservoirs provide to the U.S. grid should become even more valuable. “There’s this version of Canadian hydro not only being firm (capacity) but being something like a battery. That’s the big picture informing the vision of some policymakers,” said Justin Gundlach, senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity.

Jayni Hein, a former law professor at the New York University School of Law and natural resources director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, has become the council’s senior director for the National Environmental Policy Act, known as NEPA. Part of her role will be to steer a path through the sweeping changes the Trump administration made to NEPA—or possibly to quarterback a rewrite of them.