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If Chevron is undone, says Don Goodson, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University, that is “a big concern,” though it is unclear “how exactly that would play out because it would be such a big change, and so many cases upheld agency actions resting on Chevron.”

“[O]ur findings provide a potential basis for DOE to rationally conclude that future export applications do not serve the public interest. At a minimum, our analysis supports DOE’s efforts to more closely scrutinize export applications and provides important data points for the agency’s consideration,” said one Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) at New York University analysis.

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity hosts a Feb. 7 event about modeling the energy transition, during which researchers share findings to help guide energy policy.

“There’s absolutely no reason climate should not be considered as part of the public interest,” said Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at the New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity. The change is a long overdue update for the 2019 life cycle analysis of greenhouse gas emissions that concluded US LNG exports are likely to reduce global emissions on a per-unit basis because of an assumption that LNG is replacing other fossil fuel sources, Sarinsky said.

Max Sarinsky, an attorney with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, said if the Energy Department updates its analytical assumptions for gas, it could significantly change its calculus on approving new projects. But what would happen if the U.S. didn’t ship LNG? “The harder piece of it is thinking through more seriously how exporting gas will affect the energy mix globally — and particularly in the countries that we’re exporting to — and what that could mean for the pace of renewables going forward,” said Sarinsky. Sarinsky of NYU and his colleague, Minhong Xu, released a report Friday that tallied the climate damages of expanded U.S. LNG exports using two sets of social cost of greenhouse gas metrics — the administration’s interim figures and updated EPA values.

The Biden administration's decision to halt new LNG exports may bolster pending lawsuits against the government's approvals of proposed LNG facilities — and could face its own hurdles in court. For projects with export approvals and lawsuits that pre-date the Biden administration's pause, courts' consideration of DOE's review in those cases may be limited, said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. "Technically speaking, this announcement is outside the records of those approvals," he said. "But contextually, it's in the atmosphere. It might give judges a little bit more pause."

According to New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, the Trump administration won only 23 percent of legal challenges to its agency actions (which were almost entirely deregulatory), compared to a success rate of about 70 percent defending agency actions in previous administrations. 

Environmentalists are warning that if the Supreme Court ends the long-standing Chevron doctrine, as is widely expected after Jan. 17 arguments, it will result in significant policy uncertainty as courts conduct heightened scrutiny of EPA and other agency rules while Congress is unable to provide detailed legislation that such an approach requires... Donald Goodson of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University tells Inside EPA that the high court should have dismissed Loper and just heard Relentless, which is “the obviously better vehicle” because all nine justices can participate.

As 2023 drew to a close, EPA sharply increased its estimates for what climate change costs society. A higher carbon value can help tip the scales in favor of a stronger regulatory option that delivers greater net benefits... “Agencies often leave a more stringent option on the table, even if their own analysis finds that it would yield greater net benefits,” said Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

Donald Goodson of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University says the Chervon and APA cases, taken together, could have even more of an impact than in isolation. That is because if the Supreme Court overturns or narrows Chevron and then extends the statute of limitations under the APA, that could open up old rules to new challenges, creating massive uncertainty.