In the News

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."

The US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) is a milestone on the path towards the electric vehicle (EV) era — a monumental shift with the potential to remodel not just the US automotive industry, but the global landscape. Washington is working to establish alternatives to China’s control over critical mineral resources within the Asia-Pacific region, potentially recalibrating the global EV industry.

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.

If the Supreme Court next term overrules Chevron USA v. Natural Resources Defense Council, the era of “Chevron deference” will have been displaced by what ought to be called the era of “West Virginia skepticism.”  There is, to be sure, some parallelism in the structure of the two doctrines. In simplest terms, each is offered up as a two-step test. Still, much remains to be clarified in the implementation of West Virginia. A recent study by Natasha Brunstein of the Institute for Policy Integrity found that lower court “judges have taken vastly different approaches to defining and applying the doctrine—even within the same circuit—illustrating that many judges view the doctrine as little more than a grab bag of factors at their disposal.”

EPA is delivering the coup de grace to one of the Trump administration's most ambitious — and contested — Clean Air Act initiatives. With a newly released final rule, Administrator Michael Regan completed the job of rescinding a 2020 set of requirements subjecting all significant new air rules to an assessment of their expected costs and benefits. Backing an end to the requirements was the Institute for Policy Integrity, a New York University think tank then headed by Richard Revesz. Revesz is now in charge of the White House regulations shop housed in the Office of Management and Budget.

A proposed update to decades-old White House guidance on regulatory cost-benefit analysis is sparking competing views, as regulated industries and other critics argue the plan is too sweeping and would enable overly aggressive rules but environmentalists broadly embrace the proposal while seeking further changes. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions and a coalition of over a dozen other environmental groups, including the Institute for Policy Integrity, tout the proposal for reflecting the “evolving state of economic and scientific knowledge [that] marks a substantial improvement over the existing and outdated Circular A-4.”

Natasha Brunstein, Legal Fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity, reflects on the impacts of West Virginia v. EPA, in which the Supreme Court expressly named and relied on the major questions doctrine for the first time, one year after the landmark decision.

Regulating drip pricing is a reasonable proposal. Studies of ticket sales and airline baggage all show that drip pricing makes it harder for consumers to compare prices efficiently. However, the downside of such a proposal stems from the costs that regulation would impose on firms. As discussed in the drip pricing petition penned by the Institute for Policy Integrity, it is important to conduct a cost-benefit analysis to determine whether the reduction in consumer search costs and deadweight loss from inefficient purchases would outweigh these regulatory costs on companies.