Recent Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed airplane pollution standards that have no effect on emissions and require no technological improvements. EPA does analyze one scenario in the technical support for the proposal, however, that appears to have modest greenhouse gas emissions reduction effects. But the agency improperly monetizes and weighs those reductions. We submitted joint comments that detail flaws in EPA’s analysis and describe how the agency can correctly apply the social cost of carbon.

The Arizona Corporation Commission regularly requires that load serving entities (LSEs), which supply electricity to ratepayers, file plans with a 15-year time horizon disclosing environmental impacts from different resource mixes and how they will address those impacts. We submitted comments encouraging the Commission to ask that LSEs provide monetized estimates of the damages they expect to result from greenhouse gas emissions using the social cost of carbon.

The Department of Energy (DOE) requested input on the analytical framework, models, and tools that it is using to evaluate potential standards for room air conditioners. In the technical support document, DOE departs from recent practice by proposing to focus on the domestic-only “interim” social cost of greenhouse gases estimates. We submitted joint comments recommending that DOE should, as it has in the past, continue to monetize the full climate benefits of greenhouse gas emissions reductions, using the best available estimates, which were derived by the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases.

The PennEast 2020 Amendment Project, which provides for various additions to the proposed PennEast pipeline, would result in significant greenhouse gas emissions. We submitted comments on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commissions’s draft environmental assessment of the project, which fails to meaningfully assess the impact of emissions using social cost of carbon metrics.  

The Brattle Group developed a resource adequacy scenario analysis for the New York Public Service Commission (PSC), which is considering how to best meet its electricity generating capacity and resource adequacy needs. We submitted comments encouraging the PSC to consider several questions that Brattle’s analysis does not examine in depth.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule delaying compliance deadlines for methane emissions controls at solid waste landfills. We filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit focusing on EPA's failure to adequately assess the forgone benefits of the delay.