Recent Projects

President Trump’s recent executive order on energy disbands the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon (IWG) and withdraws its technical support documents that underpin the IWG’s range of estimates. Instead, the executive order directs federal agencies to continue to monetize the social cost of carbon emissions pursuant to the Office of Management and Budget’s Circular A-4. In our comments, we highlight that the range of estimates from the IWG that agencies have been using, including the number used by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the Draft Environmental Impact Statement, is consistent with Circular A-4 and therefore, consistent with the executive order.

We recently submitted comments to the California Public Utilities Commission on their proposal for an interim greenhouse gas adder. The proposal was for an adder that starts at $0 in 2017 and increases linearly to $250 in 2030. We support the use of a greenhouse gas adder. However, our comments suggest that the Commission instead use an adder based on the Interagency Working Group’s Social Cost of Carbon (“SCC”).

We recently submitted a second set of comments to the California Air Resources Board on its 2017 Climate Change Scoping Plan Update. These comments build on those we submitted in December to ARB on the discussion draft of the scoping plan.

The California Public Utilities Commission proposed using a Societal Cost Test to help select the combination of distributed energy resource projects that will result in the greatest net benefits to society. We counter the feedback that some stakeholders gave on implementing this approach in our reply comments. We argue that the Commission should: (1) expand its discussion of the legal basis for applying a societal cost test that includes a full range of externalities; (2) use the damage cost approach to determine the value of greenhouse gas abatement, rather than the proposed abatement cost approach; and (3) apply a societal discount rate to the analysis.

We recently submitted comments to the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) on their proposal to develop a more robust societal cost test to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of distributed energy resources (DERs). California has been a national leader in addressing the challenges associated with DER integration, and this proceeding will help the state to reform their cost-effectiveness framework.

We recently submitted comments on the California Air Resource Board’s (ARB’s) Midterm Review of its Advanced Clean Cars program, which sets pollution limits and zero-emissions vehicle targets for automobiles sold in California. California is unique among the states in that the Clean Air Act allows it to seek a waiver from EPA to set its own automobile emission targets, which other states can then adopt.

The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (“MassDEP”) has proposed a set of regulations to limit the greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants, natural gas pipelines, government-owned transportation equipment, and utility-owned switchgear equipment. MassDEP has also proposed a new requirement that retail sellers of electricity purchase gradually increasing amounts of clean energy, along with non-binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector.

In our comments to MassDEP, we offer three suggestions to ensure these regulations cut global greenhouse gas emissions in a cost-effective way. First, we encourage MassDEP to prevent potential emissions leakage to other states in the Northeast’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (“RGGI”) program. Second, we recommend the regulations should be technology-neutral and use a flexible compliance system. Third, we recommend enforceable emissions limits on the transportation sector rather than non-binding targets, especially considering that the state’s emissions from transportation sector are almost twice those of the electric sector.

In November 2016, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced its intent to ease the process for energy storage and distributed energy resources to participate in wholesale electricity markets. The proposed rule would require regional transmission organizations (RTOs) and independent system operators (ISOs) to revise their tariffs to energy providers in order to promote technology neutrality. In comments on the rule, we recommend that in addition to adjusting these tariffs, FERC should take more steps to fully realize the benefits that these technologies could provide for wholesale markets. We recommend that the Commission explicitly clarify the benefits for which it compensates these technologies; allow states to compensate for distribution-side benefits; eliminate location-based constraints on resource participation while recognizing the importance of location in optimally dispatching these services; encourage coordination between RTOs/ISOs and state regulators; and promote advanced metering technology to increase efficiency in how energy is dispatched.