In the News

In the past week, transition team leaders asked for a list of additional candidates for Environmental Protection Agency administrator—potentially one of Mr. Biden’s most important and contentious nominations. The list includes Richard Revesz, a law professor at New York University.

Policy analysts are urging President-elect Joe Biden's incoming administration to use existing authority to expand the nation's electric grid and to consider boosting the role of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A study out of Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy and New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity focused on the need for more long-distance transmission capacity to ship carbon-free solar and wind power across the country.

At EPA, new names have been circulating in the last week. Michael Regan, the head of North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, and Richard Revesz, a professor and former dean at New York University School of Law, are reportedly under consideration to lead the agency.

Transition advisers have decided to widen the pool of potential picks, according to people familiar with the matter. Contenders for the EPA post include North Carolina regulator Michael Regan, New York University’s Richard Revesz and National Wildlife Federation president Collin O’Mara.

Recent events have set off a new scramble to find a new candidate to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Possibilities now include Richard L. Revesz, a law professor and former dean of the New York University School of Law; Michael S. Regan, who currently serves as head of the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality; and Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles. One member of the Biden transition staff said that a final E.P.A. choice might not come until after Christmas.

EPA last week pushed out a major rule on environmental analysis in the twilight of President Trump's term, a move that could bolster legal challenges to climate rules ushered in by the incoming Biden administration. "It seems like it's designed to set up legal challenges to EPA rules, filed by industry, that argue if one looks only to the targeted benefits ... that the statutory provision at issue contemplates, the rule is not justified," said Jack Lienke, regulatory policy director at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity. Biden may want to get this "potential land mine" out of the way before finalizing lengthier rulemaking on emissions, said Lienke.

The deliberations come as Biden nears final decisions on a slate of nominees to lead key environment and energy posts. Also being eyed to lead the EPA is Richard Revesz, a former dean of the New York University School of Law who has been a fierce critic of the Trump administration’s environmental policy moves, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The Trump EPA estimated that enforcement delays would save utilities about $26.1 million a year. But the EPA didn’t look at the cost of environmental damage or health risks associated with delays in cleaning up the coal ash ponds. Isabel Carey and Jason Schwartz at the Institute for Policy Integrity said the EPA’s failure to consider those costs meant the rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act.

Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, argues that the rule is an example of regulatory “asymmetry” under which the Trump EPA has been “prioritizing costs and belittling benefits,” with the rule making it easier for indirect benefits of rules to be ignored. “It is like separate but equal. Separate but equal is not equal,” he says

"While this rule does not - and legally cannot - prevent the agency from considering co-benefits, it tries to treat them as second-class benefits," Jason Schwartz, Legal Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, said.