May 31, 2016
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Workshop on Federal Coal Program – June 29
For the first time in 30 years, the Department of the Interior has launched a comprehensive review to identify and evaluate potential reforms to the federal coal program. On June 29 in Washington, D.C., we will host a public workshop, soliciting input to help inform the size and scope of Interior’s Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). Legal, policy, and economic experts will analyze issues including how to ensure that American taxpayers earn “fair market value” for the use of their public resources; how to account for the environmental and public health impacts of coal production; and how to identify and analyze viable alternatives so that policymakers and the public can make informed decisions about the future of federal coal. You can RSVP for the workshop here.
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Revesz to Testify Before Senate Committee
On June 9, Richard Revesz will testify at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on the implications of the Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan. Revesz previously analyzed the effects of the stay in a policy brief and an op-ed in The Hill, arguing that the EPA is free to continue work on matters relating to the plan while the stay is in place, though it cannot enforce any plan requirements. Revesz also addressed claims that the plan’s deadlines will be tolled by the amount of time that the stay is in effect, calling these claims premature based on past precedent.
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Clean Power Plan Attorneys Discuss Litigation
We recently hosted a forum on Clean Power Plan legal issues with many of the attorneys involved in the litigation. This event, held in San Francisco on May 16, featured our own Senior Attorney, Denise Grab, in conversation with attorneys representing the State of California, the environmental intervenors, and the power company intervenors. The panelists discussed many of the key lines of argument in the upcoming D.C. Circuit litigation. The forum was co-sponsored by the Institute for Policy Integrity and the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment at Berkeley Law, and hosted by Paul Hastings LLP. For updates on future events as well as news and analysis, sign up for our Clean Power Plan Legal Landscape email updates.
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In the News: The Tragic Flaw of the Clean Air Act
In two new op-eds, Richard Revesz and Jack Lienke analyze the “tragic flaw” within the Clean Air Act, elaborating on arguments from their recent book, Struggling for Air. In a piece for Power Magazine, they discuss the history of power plant regulations in the U.S., and the ongoing efforts to correct the “grandfathering” of existing plants, which they argue is the tragic flaw of the Clean Air Act. In a piece for RegBlog, Revesz and Lienke address this grandfathering loophole, which allowed older coal plants to continue to operate for decades longer than anticipated by creating a financial incentive to repair rather than replace these facilities. They commend the Obama Administration for closing this loophole with the Clean Power Plan and warn of grandfathering in other regulations.
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The Perils of Experimentation
In a new article, forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, Michael Livermore explores the potential for policy experimentation and decentralized governance to lead to the production of information that exacerbates public choice failures. The article, “The Perils of Experimentation,” focuses on the use of information concerning the social welfare effects of alternative polices as well as political information about ideological preferences, campaign techniques, and electoral incentives. To illustrate the legal and policy implications of his arguments, Livermore analyzes recent controversies surrounding both the Clean Power Plan and the Clean Water Rule. The paper is available here.