Recent Projects

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed to significantly weaken requirements for the disposal of coal combustion residuals from coal-fired power plants. We submitted comments focusing on inadequacies in EPA’s assessment of the rule’s costs and benefits.

We submitted comments to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regarding changes to its New Source Review (NSR) applicability regulations. Our comments focus on EPA’s failure to perform a cost-benefit analysis for the proposed rule.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to abandon its longstanding “Once In, Always In” policy, in turn allowing “major sources” that reduce emissions below major source thresholds to reclassify as “area sources” subject to less stringent regulation. We submitted comments detailing inadequacies in EPA’s assessment of the rule’s costs and benefits. The agency fails to analyze the rule’s aggregate emissions impacts, conduct its illustrative analyses against an appropriate baseline, account for the possibility of inadequate state enforcement, and monetize the health and environmental effects of emissions changes.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed to deny New York’s Clean Air Act Section 126 Petition seeking reductions in pollution from upwind sources that significantly impede the state’s attainment of ozone pollution standards. We submitted comments explaining how EPA’s justification for the decision is flawed.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to withdraw a prior finding that it is “appropriate and necessary” to regulate power-sector emissions of mercury and other “air toxics” under the Clean Air Act. We submitted comments arguing that EPA has failed to provide a reasoned explanation for this change of course.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently proposed a significant weakening of greenhouse gas emissions standards for new coal-fired power plants. We submitted comments focusing on flaws in the proposal and accompanying regulatory impact analysis.

In 2016, EPA finalized Emission Guidelines and Compliance Times for Municipal Solid Waste Landfills. Once implemented, the regulation will deliver significant net benefits from reducing pollution that contributes to climate change and other harmful impacts to human health. EPA, however, is proposing to substantially delay the implementation of these protections. We submitted comments that point out how EPA fails to justify the proposed delay and assess its social costs.

In 2016, EPA finalized a set of performance standards for new, reconstructed, and modified sources of methane and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in the oil and natural gas sector. A recent proposal, however, aims to weaken the 2016 rule in a variety of ways, with the goal of reducing the regulatory “burden” on industry. We submitted comments that focus on inadequacies in the cost-benefit analysis accompanying the proposed rule.

In May 2018, EPA proposed to repeal significant portions of the Chemical Disaster Rule, a rule that would have improved safety procedures at chemical plants. In response, we submitted comments highlighting the ways in which this proposed deregulatory action is arbitrary and capricious

Claiming an unsubstantiated need to improve consistency and transparency in its economic analyses, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering revisions to how it weighs costs and benefits in rulemakings. In our comments to EPA, we argue that this proposal is searching for a problem that does not exist. In implying that the agency’s past analyses have somehow inappropriately considered costs and benefits, EPA relies on vague or false assumptions and misleading examples. In fact, through 2016, EPA’s past analyses of regulatory costs and benefits were among the most thorough, consistent, and transparent regulatory impact analyses conducted in the federal government and had justified some of the most net beneficial rules in the history of federal regulation.