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Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Structure of the Administrative State
The Case of Financial Services
The viability and desirability of conducting cost-benefit analysis of financial regulation is a subject of intense academic debate. Opponents claim that such analysis is feasible for environmental regulation but not for financial regulation because of the difference in the benefits that require monetization in the respective areas. This article, which will be published in a forthcoming edition of the Yale Journal on Regulation, argues that the recent debate misses an important part of the problem. In large part, cost-benefit analysis of financial regulation cannot currently be performed successfully because of institutional shortcomings, not analytical difficulties. Compared to Executive Branch agencies, independent agencies, like the major financial regulatory agencies, lack the capacity to do cost-benefit analyses of acceptable quality. Fortunately, there are good Executive Branch models that could be exported to the financial regulatory agencies.
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Jayni Hein Addresses IEL’s Annual Oil and Gas Conference
On February 19th, our Policy Director, Jayni Hein, presented at the Institute for Energy Law’s Annual Oil and Gas Law Conference in Houston. Speaking on a panel titled “How Revenues Should be Collected for the Use of Federal Lands for Energy Development.”
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Managing the Future of the Electricity Grid: Distributed Generation and Net Metering
As distributed energy generation is becoming increasingly common, the debate on how a utility’s customers should be compensated for the excess energy they sell back to the grid is intensifying. This article provides a thorough analysis of the benefits and the costs of distributed generation and highlights the analytical flaws and missing elements in the competing positions and in all the existing policies.
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Brief for BLM Coal Lease Case
We recently submitted an amicus brief in a case challenging two large coal leases approved by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). The case, WildEarth Guardians v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, is being heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit. We believe that BLM used an irrational assumption about coal supply and demand in its environmental impact statement for the Wright Area coal leases in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming. Because of this flawed assumption, BLM’s presentation of the climate consequences of leasing, versus taking no action, is inaccurate and misleading, in violation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
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Clean Power Plan - Comments on Federal Plan/Model Trading Rules
Concurrently with issuing its final Clean Power Plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants, the EPA issued a set of proposed federal plan requirements and model trading rules to provide states guidance as they determine their strategies to comply with the Clean Power Plan. We recently submitted comments to the agency on how these guidelines can be improved to best reduce compliance costs and promote effectiveness of the plan.
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Revesz Named One of Most Influential Legal Educators
The National Jurist has named Richard Revesz to its list of the 25 “Most Influential People in Legal Education.”
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Comments on Supplemental Finding for EPA Mercury Rule
After the Supreme Court ruled that the EPA did not consider costs at the appropriate stage of its regulatory process when crafting the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards, the EPA was tasked with revising the rule. The agency recently released a supplemental finding that it is appropriate and necessary to regulate hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired electric utility steam generating units, taking the costs of regulation into account. We submitted comments to the agency.
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Comments on the Forest Service’s Use of the Social Cost of Carbon
In a proposed exception to the Colorado Roadless Rule, which provides for management of National Forest roadless areas where such activities as tree cutting and road construction are prohibited, the Forest Service analyzes the climate effects of its proposal. Though the agency’s choices to monetize greenhouse gas emissions and to use the Interagency Working Group’s estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon in its supplemental environmental impact statement are appropriate and necessary, its application of the metric is flawed in several respects.
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Legal Pathways to Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Under Section 115 of the Clean Air Act
The most efficient legal tool for addressing U.S. climate pollution can likely be found in an unused provision of the Clean Air Act. Section 115 of the Act, titled “International Air Pollution,” authorizes the EPA to develop and implement an economy-wide, market-based program to reduce domestic greenhouse gas emissions. This report, jointly authored by a team of law professors and attorneys at three of the country’s leading institutes focused on climate change and environmental law, offers an in-depth analysis of Section 115, which would provide the most flexible approach for achieving the targets from the Paris climate agreement.
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Struggling for Air
Power Plants and the “War on Coal”
Since the beginning of the Obama Administration, conservative politicians have railed against the President’s “War on Coal.” As evidence of this supposed siege, they point to a series of rules issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that aim to slash air pollution from the nation’s power sector. Because coal produces far more pollution than any other major energy source, these rules are expected to further reduce its already shrinking share of the electricity market in favor of cleaner options like natural gas and solar power. But the EPA’s policies are hardly the “unprecedented regulatory assault” that opponents make them out to be. Instead, they are merely the latest chapter in a multi-decade struggle to overcome a tragic flaw in our nation’s most important environmental law.