Recent Projects

In 2017, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) suspended its 2016 Civil Penalties Rule, which adjusted the penalties for automobile manufacturer non-compliance with fuel economy standards for the first time in decades to reflect inflation. In issuing its suspension, NHTSA claimed that it was causing no harm. Our brief in the case challenging this suspension shows that NHTSA’s claim of no harm was inaccurate.

At a meeting in Houston on February 28, the Interior Department’s Royalty Policy Committee recommended lowering the royalty rate that companies pay to the public when they drill for oil and gas in U.S. coastal waters. Such a change would go against the Interior Department’s statutory mandate to earn fair market value for the development of publicly owned natural resources. Our policy director, Jayni Hein, submitted public comments to the Royalty Policy Committee and spoke at the meeting.

Though the Environmental Protection Agency plans to replace the Clean Power Plan, our recent comments to EPA reiterate that there is no compelling legal or economic case for repealing the Clean Power Plan or deviating from its flexible design. The Clean Power Plan is a permissible exercise of the EPA’s rulemaking authority under the Clean Air Act, is consistent with regulatory precedent, and is hugely cost-benefit justified.

As part of its climate plan, the State of Virginia proposes to join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), a carbon trading program currently including states across the Northeastern US. We submitted comments to RGGI on how it can incorporate Virginia into the program and reduce carbon emission in a cost-effective way. RGGI should carefully assess the effect that Virginia’s initial carbon allowance level will have on the RGGI cap. Adding Virginia electricity generators to RGGI will improve electricity market efficiency. The exact extent of those improvements will be affected by the windfall revenue that Virginia’s power producers may receive through the unique consignment auction process for the allowances. RGGI should therefore ensure that the possibilities for windfall are minimized for Virginia’s regulated power producers.

The Colorado Public Utilities Commission is revising their electricity resource planning process. Our comments to the Commission suggest legal language for incorporating externalities, like the climate effects of greenhouse gas emissions, into the state’s electricity policy. We also explain why the Social Cost of Carbon, as developed by the federal government in 2016, is the best tool for incorporating the externalities of carbon emissions into policy. Our response comments rebut the state electric utility’s faulty arguments against using the social cost of carbon in this process, and supports the use of cost-benefit analysis in determining the best policy option.

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) within the Department of the Interior is tasked with setting safety and environmental standards for offshore oil and gas production and exploration in federal waters. While BSEE updated its safety requirements in 2016, it now proposes to weaken and repeal some of these safety requirements in order to encourage more oil and gas production. In our comments on the proposed rule, we argue that the agency has failed to provide a reasoned explanation for repealing these requirements, which were part of a comprehensive update to safety regulations that had not been revised since 1988.

New York State plans to provide support to some existing small hydro, wind, and biomass generation facilities at risk of closure, in order to prevent the state from backsliding on its ambitious clean energy goals. The New York Public Service Commission released a report on the Clean Energy Standard Tier 2 Maintenance program, which focuses on the criteria a generator should meet in order to receive financial support and how these payments should be determined. Our comments on the report encourage the Commission to harmonize these payments across all proposed review processes for Tier 2 generators.

Our Litigation Director, Bethany Davis Noll, and Energy Policy Director, Burcin Unel, recently presented a draft paper on federal carbon pricing in wholesale energy markets at the 2018 Association of American Law Schools Conference. In a panel on legal constraints to implementing clean energy policies, they discussed the legal authority of the federal government, specifically the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to price carbon emissions in wholesale energy markets and how this authority interacts with state-level clean energy policy.

We recently submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on its market-based mitigation programs. Our comments were based in part on the recommendations Policy Integrity’s Legal Director, Jason Schwartz, made to the Administrative Conference of the United States on marketable permits, which were adopted in late December.