In the News

Top Hill Democrats are backing the Biden EPA’s legal defense of its light-duty vehicle greenhouse gas rule, asserting that challengers’ claims the standards violate the “major questions” doctrine ignore “explicit direction” from Congress and “would severely limit the ability of Congress itself to craft effective legislation” if affirmed. Other amicus briefs backing EPA filed by a March 3 deadline include filings by the Institute for Policy Integrity.

University of Virginia law professor Michael Livermore explains the significance of the Biden administration's proposal to increase its estimate of the social cost of carbon, which federal regulatory agencies use to measure the economic consequences of greenhouse gas emissions. Livermore's 2022 article in the Yale Journal on Regulation, Costs, Confusion and Climate Change, coauthored with Justin Gundlach of New York University School of Law, looked at the SCC's effectiveness as a cost-benefit analysis tool.

Environmental groups are largely supporting EPA’s draft update and urge the agency to use even lower discount rates than it floats. For example, a large coalition of groups including the Natural Resources Defense Council and Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University say in Feb. 13 comments that the report “faithfully implements the roadmap laid out in 2017” by the National Academies of Science, Engineering & Medicine“ and applies recent advances in science and economics on the cost of climate change.

Supporters have said that EPA is supposed to account for all predicted benefits of future rules, even those not directly tied to the planned regulation's purpose or calculable in money terms. Among those previously taking that position is Richard Revesz, who now heads the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Revesz, a Biden appointee who won Senate confirmation for the post late last year, earlier led the Institute for Policy Integrity, a liberal-leaning think tank based at New York University law school.

Legislation in Albany to force oil companies to NY's climate costs will not raise the price of gas or home heating, according to an analysis from the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU Law. The report makes clear that opponents' claims otherwise are false.

Federal government contractors are detailing a host of legal and technical criticisms of the Biden administration’s proposed requirements for large contractors to disclose various types climate information, even as environmentalists say the plan would save taxpayer funds and protect against climate risks. New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, for instance, says the Federal Acquisition Regulation Council should be careful not to “understate baseline levels of climate risk in disclosure (and thus overstate the incremental compliance costs of the Proposed Rule.)”

Revesz came to the White House from his role as an environmental law professor and dean emeritus of New York University Law School. He is also the co-founder of an N.Y.U.-affiliated think tank, the Institute for Policy Integrity, which is known for its innovative approach to analyzing the costs and benefits of environmental regulations.

An appellate court covering several major energy-producing states has issued a first-of-its-kind ruling requiring officials to weigh the cumulative greenhouse gas effects of approving oil and gas drilling in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews and to use a GHG budget, setting a precedent that environmentalists say is long overdue. According to an amicus brief from the Institute for Policy Integrity, such an analysis would show a social cost of more than $1.6 billion from the applications for permits to drill.

Environmentalists are urging the Department of Energy (DOE) to rescind a Trump-era categorical exclusion (CE) exempting liquified natural gas (LNG) projects from National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, saying the exclusion violates the DOE’s Natural Gas Act (NGA) authority and that the projects undermine the nation’s climate goals. Max Sarinsky, an IPI senior attorney, tells Inside EPA that his group decided to ask DOE to rescind the LNG CE even as DOE is looking to expand CEs to implement the IRA.

“Many anticipated actions have been delayed amid an evolving judicial landscape and legislative developments that bear influence on regulatory design," said Dena Adler. "The administration recently rolled out an updated regulatory agenda with many actions scheduled for release over the next year, which we have not yet had the chance to evaluate. This year will be a critical period for the administration to propose and finalize regulations as well as implement the IRA.”