In the News

Today, the safe transportation and storage of carbon dioxide is shaping the public debate. “There aren’t many sequestration projects that exist yet,” Derek Sylvan, with the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, told Jean. “So, it’s especially important for the next wave of projects to get extra scrutiny until all the necessary safety precautions are well understood.”

“I think that this is a really critical juncture,” said Derek Sylvan, strategic director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. “There aren’t many sequestration projects that exist yet. So, it’s especially important for the next wave of projects to get extra scrutiny until all the necessary safety precautions are well understood.”

Recently, the US Supreme Court has not shied away from issuing precedent-setting decisions.  Next year, that trend may continue when they take up the case of Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo which will have deep implications for Chevron Deference. In a recent conversation, Dena Adler, Research Scholar at the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, remarked that, “For decades, Congress has legislated under the assumption that it can broadly authorize agencies to reasonably interpret statutes to solve problems within their sphere of expertise. The Chevron framework allows agencies to leverage their expertise to address problems and prevents Congress from getting bogged down in technical matters that are beyond its knowledge and time-intensive to address.”

A lawsuit challenging a natural gas expansion project on the East Coast could change how federal regulators assess state climate policies. “If the D.C. Circuit doesn’t step in, state ratepayers are going to end up paying twice,” said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity, a think tank based at New York University School of Law. “They’ll end up paying more as the states are transitioning away from gas and electrifying building and heating and other uses.”

New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity stated the act is “burdensome, irrational, and legally questionable” for several reasons.

Natasha Brunstein & Donald L. R. Goodson... [give] us a solid overview of the MQD’s triggers that is increasingly being picked up by advocates and academics. In their telling, the MQD is triggered in “extraordinary” cases where an agency action is (1) “unheralded” and (2) “transformative"... Richard L. Revesz & Max Sarinsky, Regulatory Antecedents and the Major Questions Doctrine (Dec. 12, 2022). If you work at a federal agency, please, please, please read this paper.

The White House has proposed a new rule to streamline permitting for clean energy and other infrastructure projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a bedrock law that requires federal agencies to conduct an environmental review before approving any major project. Max Sarinsky, senior attorney at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, described the rule as “fairly modest and incremental” to E&E News. “We’re in an era where preserving the environment often means building new things,” he said. “I think these regulations are trying to be sensitive to that.”

While ecosystems have sometimes appeared in the cost-benefit assessments that agencies must write to support their rules, policies and projects, there has never been a governmentwide directive or guidance for doing that accounting. As a result, ecosystem values are treated as secondary to more easily quantified benefits, Richard Revesz, administrator of OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and co-founder of the Institute for Policy Integrtity, along with OSTP Director Arati Prabhakar wrote in a blog post Tuesday.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality proposed long-awaited regulations Friday that would streamline permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act. Federal agencies would need to meet set deadlines for environmental reviews — as required by this year's debt ceiling deal — but also consider how energy projects impact climate change and communities historically overburdened by pollution. Max Sarinsky, a senior attorney at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, described the draft as "meaningful" but "also fairly modest and incremental."

Valuing the cost of climate pollution is tremendously useful for policymakers as they weigh the benefits and drawbacks of potential strategies to mitigate climate change. Earlier this year, Canada update its climate-damage valuations for the first time since 2016. While some politicians have mischaracterized the update for political gain, in reality this commonsense update reflects the latest advances in science and economics.