Recent Projects

New York State is seeking to refine its method for compensating distributed energy resources (DERs) based on the value that they provide, including their potential to reduce local air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Together with a group of government agencies, non-governmental community and environmental organizations, academic centers, and clean energy businesses, we submitted a report that describes the work of an informal, stakeholder-led Environmental / Environmental Justice Value Subgroup, which was formed to identify methods for calculating the environmental and public health value of avoided air pollution caused by DER injections in New York State. As part of that filing, we also submitted our report, Valuing Pollution Reductions, which serves as a general guide for state regulators interested in calculating the environmental and public health value of avoided air pollution caused by DER injections.We also presented the results of this report to NYS DPS Staff.

The Department of the Interior is proposing to extend leasing and operations at New Mexico’s San Juan mine by 15 years, producing up to 53 million additional tons of coal that will release 97.5 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions when combusted. In our comments to Interior on its draft environmental impact statement (DEIS) for the mine’s lease extension, we criticize Interior’s failure to fully account for the climate effects related to the project by monetizing the damage these emissions will cause. This refusal leaves the public and decisionmakers in the dark about the climate effects of the project, and is arbitrary given that the agency relies on the project’s monetized benefits to justify its action.

In 2016, the Department of the Interior’s Office of Natural Resources Revenue (ONRR) issued the Consolidated Federal Oil & Gas and Federal & Indian Coal Valuation Reform (Valuation Rule). The Valuation Rule sought to ensure that states and the federal government receive the full value of royalties due under the law for oil, gas, and coal extracted from public land. In 2017, ONRR abruptly reversed course and repealed the rule. State attorneys general have now sued ONRR over the repeal and filed a motion for summary judgment. In our brief supporting the plaintiffs, we argue that ONRR did not provide a reasoned explanation for repealing the Valuation Rule, both because ONRR fails to accurately assess the repeal’s economic impact and because ONRR fails to provide a reasoned explanation for its abrupt change in course.

New York State is considering setting a procurement goal of 2,400 MWs worth of new offshore wind generation facilities by 2030. In our comments to the New York Public Service Commission, we encourage the Commission to continue the use of the Social Cost of Carbon to value the benefits of avoiding greenhouse-gas emissions in the state’s Offshore Wind Policy. We also explain that the proposal to pay for the benefits of offshore wind outside of the wholesale markets is a reasonable way to move closer to internalizing the external costs of carbon-dioxide emissions and other pollution.

EPA has indicated that it intends to weaken its emission standards for light-duty vehicles and that it may attempt to revoke California’s ability under the Clean Air Act to maintain these protective standards. Our comments to California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) discuss the substantial economic benefits that California would gain from maintaining the more stringent standards that both EPA and California currently require. We submitted our report, Analyzing EPA’s Vehicle-Emissions Decisions, to CARB to provide additional information on why weakening vehicle emission standards set for years 2022-2025 would be economically irrational.

New York State is in the process of reforming its payment system for distributed energy resources (DERs), such as rooftop solar panels, away from a net energy metering policy that compensated these resources at retail electricity rates. Our comments to the New York Public Service Commission encourage the state to move towards rate designs that better reflect the underlying costs of generating, transmitting, and distributing electricity, including environmental externalities for all customers, including those who do not own DERs. Our joint comments with other stakeholders also offer high-level principles for rate design that can help achieve the state’s clean energy goals.

EPA’s Science Advisory Board provides independent scientific guidance to the Agency. Our oral comments to EPA’s Science Advisory Board encourage the Board to review the science and economics behind EPA’s proposed deregulatory actions. We ask the Board to consider our recent paper on the full value of reducing particulate matter (PM) pollution in evaluating the benefits of reducing PM below the current National Ambient Air Quality Standards. Our comments also ask the Board to review EPA’s manipulation of economics in order to downplay the climate harms of its deregulatory actions. Specifically, we discuss manipulations of the 2016 Interagency Working Group’s Social Cost of Carbon estimates. We argue that EPA’s new “interim” estimate for the Social Cost of Carbon ignores the global nature of climate damage and obscures the devastating effects that climate change will have on future generations, and we strongly encourage review of the methods used to reach this new “interim” estimate.

The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) is responsible for leasing offshore areas for energy development, including areas for wind energy. The agency has so far awarded 13 commercial offshore wind leases, totaling about 17 GW of capacity. In response to its request for feedback on the future of its offshore wind program for the Atlantic Outer Continental Shelf, our comments to BOEM suggest steps toward developing a robust offshore wind program that will deliver benefits to the public for decades to come.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requested feedback from regional electricity regulators on the state of resilience in wholesale markets, efforts underway to ensure grid resilience, and opportunities for future improvement. Their responses make clear that while grid resilience is an issue worthy of continued attention, there is not currently evidence to support mandatory, national or even regional action to address acute resilience concerns. Our comments to FERC argue that it should not seek a “one-size-fits-all” solution for all Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators (RTOs/ISOs), nor should it consider resilience a “catch-all” concept that opens the door to otherwise unsupported or unnecessary actions.

PJM Interconnection, L.L.C (PJM), a regional electricity transmission organization serving 13 states and Washington D.C., recently submitted a proposal to the federal government requesting changes that would “mitigate” the impact of state climate and energy policies on electricity markets. In our comments to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), we argue that PJM’s proposals rest on a faulty premise that state public policies are distorting the economic efficiency of capacity market price signals, which heavily affect how generators enter and exit the market.