Recent Projects

On October 2, 2020, the Institute for Policy Integrity and the Volatility and Risk Institute at NYU Stern School of Business convened a conference bringing together investors, companies, researchers, and regulators to discuss climate-related financial risks and identify opportunities to better assess, report, and act on them. This brief summarizes some of the major points of discussion from the conference, which featured different perspectives on various policy, economic, and legal issues. 

Distributional and equity concerns have typically received short shrift in federal administrative decisionmaking, particularly with regard to actions with climate-change impacts. This report aims to aid advocates and policymakers in meaningfully addressing the disparate climate impacts of federal actions. 

Guided by the blueprint of all three Bostock opinions, this article, published in the Columbia Journal of Environmental Law, performs a deep dive into the legislative materials surrounding the enactment of the Clean Air Act of 1970, uncovering a treasure trove of sources that had not previously been part of the public discourse. It shows how, under the interpretive approach of each of the three opinions, greenhouse gases are unquestionably pollutants for the purposes of the Clean Air Act. Because the approaches in the majority and dissents in Bostock—and thus a majority of the current Court—all point in the same direction, the era of greenhouse gas exceptionalism should now be over.

In the absence of legislation, critical long-distance transmission can be developed by applying existing federal legal authorities. A number of important regulatory and commercial measures have been proposed, including streamlining transmission planning, upgrading existing transmission system components, putting transmission lines underground, and using existing rights-of-way from highways and railroads. Even if these solutions are adopted, however, state siting requirements may prove an important obstacle to developing an efficient, national transmission grid. So, this paper examines legal authorities already available to the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to develop the interstate transmission capacity crucial to the energy transition.