Recent Projects

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.

We recently submitted comments to the New York State Department of Public Service Staff regarding their Responsive Proposal for Preserving Zero-Emissions Attributes. This Proposal offers recommendations on how to achieve New York’s clean energy target: 50 percent of all electricity used in the state by 2030 should be generated by renewable energy sources.

We recently submitted comments to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on business and financial disclosures related to environmental risk.

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.

We recently submitted comments to BOEM in response to its proposed five-year offshore leasing program for 2017-2022. In its proposed program, BOEM qualitatively considers the option value, or informational value of delaying leasing until more information is available on relevant environmental, social, and technological uncertainties. In addition, BOEM will now consider environmental and social costs in its “hurdle price” analysis that helps determine whether and when to offer areas for lease. Building on this progress, we recommend that BOEM take additional steps to strengthen its analysis in line with best practices and OCSLA’s mandate to balance economic, social, and environmental values.

The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is currently conducting a review of the methodologies used to calculate the Social Cost of Carbon (SCC). We submitted comments to NAS to help inform this process.

As distributed energy resources (“DER”) are becoming increasingly common, the debate on how customers with such systems should be compensated is intensifying in many states. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) is creating a Distributed Energy Resources Compensation Manual to assist states with these policy decisions. We recently submitted comments to NARUC’s Staff Subcommittee on Rate Design regarding the most economically desirable approach to use for DER compensation.

The 2015 New York State Energy Plan set one of the most ambitious clean energy targets in the nation: 50 percent of all electricity used in the state should be generated by renewable energy sources. The Department of Public Service Staff recently released a White Paper on the Clean Energy Standard, with recommendations on how to achieve this ambitious goal. We submitted comments to the New York State Public Service Commission, outlining some additional steps that can help ensure that the Clean Energy Standard is not excessively costly, and is effective in achieving all of its policy goals.

We recently submitted two sets of public comments to the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) regarding a proposed rule to reduce waste of natural gas from venting, flaring, and leaks during oil and gas production on federal and Indian lands. BLM has proposed making natural gas lost through these processes subject to royalty payments.

We recently submitted comments to the New York Public Service Commission on how the Commission should develop an interim successor to its net metering policy, and how distributed energy resources should be valued in the future. We filed the comments jointly with the Environmental Defense Fund. To begin to move the retail electricity markets toward efficient and accurate recognition of the value of distributed energy resources, we suggest that the Commission should enhance its existing net energy metering policy to align compensation with the system benefits provided by distributed energy resources; establish a fully unbundled retail price structure; and specifically account for the environmental benefits of distributed energy resources in future pricing structures.