Recent Projects

We recently submitted a joint letter, coauthored by several environmental groups, to the House Committee on Natural Resources about the “Transparency and Honesty in Energy Regulations Act of 2017.” This act, H.R. 3117, seeks to direct agencies to ignore or drastically undervalue climate damages, and would seriously hamper future use and development of economically and scientifically sound estimates for the Social Cost of Carbon. This would result in federal government decisionmaking that fails to adequately account for the enormous social and economic consequences of climate change. In the letter, we urge the Committee to reject this and any other attempt to weaken, minimize or eliminate the requirement that agencies take into account the cost of climate change.

A recent report criticizing New York’s Clean Energy Standard (“CES”) incorrectly argues that the CO2-reduction benefits from these programs are non-existent. The report claims that the benefits of reducing CO2 emissions with the CES, which are valued using the Social Cost of Carbon (“SCC”), are “effectively zero.” This conclusion and the preceding assertions are incorrect and inconsistent with basic economics. Our response highlights the flaws of the report and explains that New York’s CES in fact generates significant and crucial environmental benefits.

On September 15, 2017, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit ruled that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) by providing an inadequate analysis of the likely climate impacts from four coal leases. This ruling, as argued in our press release on the case, establishes an important judicial precedent. Agencies cannot make unsupported assumptions about climate effects while still complying with NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act.

Several bills that recently won Senate committee approval could have devastating impacts on the efficiency and effectiveness of government. Our new fact sheets describe the dangers of these bills.

On August 8, 2016, the Seventh Circuit handed down its opinion in Zero Zone, Inc. v. United States Department of Energy, upholding the agency’s use of the social cost of carbon (SCC) in its regulatory impact analysis of commercial refrigerator energy efficiency standards. The ruling may have paved the way for a new chapter in economically efficient U.S. climate policies, and our brief for the case was acknowledged in the judges’ opinion.

In 2015, New York State announced its Clean Energy Standard, an ambitious mandate to boost clean energy. We have submitted numerous comments to the New York State Public Service Commission, suggesting several changes in the design of this Standard to ensure that the state’s policy goals can be met in the most-cost effective manner. In its final order, the Commission adopted several of our suggested changes. Most notably, the Commission relied on our comments in deciding to calculate zero-emission credit payments based on the Social Cost of Carbon. This marks a major success in our ongoing efforts to encourage government agencies to use the Social Cost of Carbon as a tool when designing policy.

On July 6, Jayni Hein testified at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing on the “Innovation in Offshore Leasing Act.” The hearing, held by the Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, focused on H.R. 5577, a bill that would amend the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act to allow internet-based offshore oil and gas lease sales, among other measures. Hein’s testimony covered four main topics, suggesting that the Department of the Interior should: continue to increase transparency and public participation in the offshore leasing process; improve the regulations that underlie the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s (BOEM’s) five-year planning process; build on recent progress addressing environmental, social, and economic uncertainty in its five-year Program and lease sales; and advance efforts to account for the environmental and social costs of fossil fuel leasing through royalty rate and other fiscal reform. Hein’s testimony elaborated on some of the arguments from her recent Alaska Law Review article and recent comments to BOEM.

As the Department of the Interior continues its review of the federal coal leasing program, we recently released two new publications on coal reform and hosted a related workshop for government officials.

On June 9, Richard Revesz testified at a Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing focused on the Supreme Court’s stay of the Clean Power Plan.

The National Jurist has named Richard Revesz to its list of the 25 “Most Influential People in Legal Education.”