In the News

Key U.S. authorities have acknowledged the urgent need to act on climate risks to the banking system. Recent actions and remarks are beginning to shed light on what the next wave of policies to address these risks might entail. They’re likely to look a lot like many other, existing financial risk regulations.

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Inflation Reduction Act allocated billions of dollars toward “clean” hydrogen. Now federal agencies need to specify what counts as clean. Matt Lifson explains why a marginal-emissions approach is essential.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) includes the most significant investment in climate that Congress has ever made. Getting input from a range of relevant stakeholders will help Treasury and the IRS ensure the IRA meets its goals. Building off Mike Kaercher’s remarks at the Institute for Policy Integrity’s conference A New Era of Climate & Energy Policy, this post provides a brief overview of the climate provisions, discusses the importance of public interest stakeholder contributions in implementing them, and presents two examples of high-priority projects that could benefit substantially from public interest stakeholder input.

After the Supreme Court handed down its decision in West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier this year, many speculated on what it does—and does not—mean for future power plant rules. One key point is clear: the decision will shape, but not stop, power plant regulation, writes Attorney Dena Adler.

The major questions doctrine boils down to the following: under rare circumstances that would transform the underlying statute, the Court may depart from its normal approach to agency deference and look more skeptically on agency authority in the absence of clear congressional authorization. Many have noted the ill-defined parameters of this interpretive principle,1 but one key feature is not reasonably in dispute: it remains the exception, not the rule.

The IRA may reduce any real or perceived tension between wholesale markets and state policies and the need for other mechanisms to harmonize wholesale markets and state policies.

After a meteoric rise in production over the past decade, the United States has become the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) in the world. Yet, the analysis behind LNG terminal and export approvals overlooks climate and environmental justice impacts, despite promises of imminent reform. Policy Integrity’s new report provides a comprehensive look at the Department of Energy’s (DOE) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) past practice in this space and offers recommendations for improving their review of the climate and environmental justice impacts of LNG approvals.

Shortly after his inauguration, President Biden promised to reduce climate pollution in every sector of the economy. One obstacle to achieving this goal: the Trump Administration. Although President Trump is no longer in office, the way the Trump Administration approached Obama-era regulations may have developed a blueprint for states and industry groups to challenge climate regulations adopted by the Biden Administration, warn Richard L. Revesz of NYU School of Law and Natasha Brunstein, a student at Yale Law School. Revesz and Brunstein argue that the Trump Administration manipulated what lawyers and judges have come to refer to as a “major questions” doctrine to justify striking down any regulation it disfavored.

A recently introduced bill aiming to prevent federal agencies from considering the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases highlights the role some bills play in informing — and sometimes misinforming — the public. Though almost certainly destined to fail, the bill presents faulty and misleading criticisms that could have chilling effects on important policy evaluation efforts.

The ruling [West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)] is a blow to climate action and could signal the court’s hostility to a wide range of future regulations within and beyond the climate and environmental sphere, including those related to consumer protection and worker safety. Although the immediate effects on US climate policy aren’t pervasive, EPA now needs to evaluate the emissions-reduction potential and legal risks of alternative regulatory approaches for the power sector.