In the News

Roughly 1,800 regulators and other energy professionals gathered for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit last week where state and federal regulators had a lot to say about the clean energy transition, grid reliability and new EPA rules. On a panel with state public utility commissioners, EPA’s Air Office lead, Joseph Goffman, discussed how to navigate greenhouse gas pollution-reduction rules while maintaining adequate energy resources during the energy transition. He also listened to their concerns about the transition’s pace and scope.

It stands to reason that NHTSA should use the best information possible to set CAFE standards. But, in NHTSA’s enabling statute, the U.S. Congress has made sure that NHTSA cannot do so. The statute pulls wool over the agency’s eyes in two key ways.

Utility regulators now face the challenge of ensuring that the energy utilities they oversee do their parts to effect the energy transition, while continuing to provide safe and adequate service at just and reasonable rates. Moreover, they need to accomplish all this while assuring fairer outcomes for communities that have in the past been persistently and disproportionately harmed by energy infrastructure decisions.

By establishing commonsense measurement rules for the emissions intensity of electrolytic hydrogen, Treasury’s NOPR goes a long way towards ensuring that we don’t accidentally subsidize fossil-fuel-powered electrolysis. Without these rules, it would be easy to confuse fossil-fuel-powered electrolysis with renewables-powered electrolysis. If that were to happen, the most significant climate law in U.S. history would have the perverse effect of subsidizing hydrogen that causes twice as many emissions as the old method of steam methane reforming.

Companies face growing financial risks from climate change. Around the world, investors are demanding more consistent, comparable, and reliable information about these risks so that they can make informed investment decisions. Regulators are listening. In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule that would require public companies to include in certain SEC filings specific climate-related disclosures. The SEC might finalize these requirements any day now. In the meantime, California and the European Union (EU) have adopted their own climate-related disclosure regimes. These new regimes require many of the same disclosures and cover many of the same companies as the SEC’s proposed rule.

Agrowing number of states have embraced zero-emissions electricity as a core component of their economy-wide decarbonization strategy. On November 6, the Institute for Policy Integrity hosted a conference on state-level pathways to achieving those goals. Over the course of three sessions — two panels and a keynote — conference participants examined the technical, economic, and equity issues that arise in connection with state efforts in this area.

On November 8th, Policy Integrity hosted a webinar that brought together researchers and policy experts for a discussion about the complex task of decarbonizing industrial sectors like steel, cement, and chemical manufacturing. The transition away from fossil fuel use has been immensely challenging in these areas, and new research is critical for identifying the most promising strategies. The discussion revolved around not only technological advancements but also policy tools and efforts to understand and navigate the socioeconomic implications of this significant transformation.

As winter approaches, fears are mounting that parts of our energy system could fail again during severe weather. Many experts around the country are working to ensure that the grid remains reliable, as well as affordable, as the transition toward cleaner energy accelerates: This was a major topic at Thursday’s Federal Energy Regulatory Commission technical conference.

As the Supreme Court prepares to decide the fate of one of its most cited precedents, it will do so without a full slate of Justices. There’s a simple solution sitting in the current batch of petitions at the Court.

In Utah v. Walsh, Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk crisply and correctly rejected the plaintiffs’ farfetched attempt to rely on the major questions doctrine. Hopefully other lower courts will follow suit and apply the major questions doctrine only as set forth in the Supreme Court’s opinions, not as poorly summarized by litigants looking for an easy victory. Doing so should have the result the Supreme Court intended of applying the doctrine only in “extraordinary cases,” not in every run-of-the-mill challenge to federal agency action.