Recent Projects

Our Litigation Director, Bethany Davis Noll, and Energy Policy Director, Burcin Unel, recently presented a draft paper on federal carbon pricing in wholesale energy markets at the 2018 Association of American Law Schools Conference. In a panel on legal constraints to implementing clean energy policies, they discussed the legal authority of the federal government, specifically the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to price carbon emissions in wholesale energy markets and how this authority interacts with state-level clean energy policy.

We recently submitted comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on its market-based mitigation programs. Our comments were based in part on the recommendations Policy Integrity’s Legal Director, Jason Schwartz, made to the Administrative Conference of the United States on marketable permits, which were adopted in late December.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed to grandfather glider trucks, which have new truck bodies but old powertrains, into older emissions requirements. Our comments to EPA argue that the Agency improperly disregarded the effects that this exemption would have on air pollution, public health, and environmental quality, in violation of both the Clean Air Act and applicable executive orders on cost-benefit analysis. In particular, EPA failed to consider the extent to which its action will increase air pollution (and attendant environmental harms) by extending the useful economic life of older, dirtier powertrains.

The Department of Labor recently proposed rescission of tip regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act. We submitted comments explaining the Department’s failures, including to quantify important effects of the proposed rescission, to consider a range of realistic assumptions, or even to explain why the rescission’s purported benefits justify the total possible costs.

The New York Department of Public Service (DPS) is working on developing a more accurate compensation mechanism for distributed energy resources (DERs) that can capture the true value that DERs create. We have been particularly involved in the Value Stack Working Group, which is examining possible ways to price DERs based on specific value components of the resources, including environmental attributes. We were invited to make a presentation to the PSC on monetizing externalities of air pollution. In our presentation, we explained that the Commission can increase economic efficiency by directly incorporating the monetary value of avoided emissions as a value stack component into the DER compensation mechanism, and provided a methodology for this process. We plan to remain involved in this proceeding as it progresses in the coming months.

In a decision ordering the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to implement a fair housing rule that the Trump administration sought to delay, Chief Judge Beryl A. Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia cited Policy Integrity’s amicus brief in the case. The Small Area Fair Market Rent rule, finalized under President Obama, seeks to give low-income families greater access to housing in higher-rent neighborhoods and break up areas of concentrated poverty. Our brief argued that, in suspending the rule’s implementation for two years, HUD violated principles of administrative law by disregarding economic impacts and failing to seek public comment. Judge Howell found that HUD’s decision to delay the rule exceeded the agency’s legal authority and that the reasons it gave for doing so were arbitrary and capricious. She ordered HUD to implement the rule by January 1, 2018.

Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education has twice delayed implementation of the Borrower Defense Rule, a 2016 regulation designed to help students who have been defrauded by for-profit educational institutions discharge their federal student loans. In our amicus brief supporting borrower and state challenges to the delay, we argue that the Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act by arbitrarily disregarding the harms that the delays impose on student borrowers. We also submitted a comment letter to the agency regarding the second delay.

Our amicus brief to the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming defends the 2016 Bureau of Land Management’s “Waste Prevention Rule,” which is designed to limit methane waste from oil and gas production on public lands. In our brief, we show that the rule reasonably complied with BLM’s statutory duty to set waste-prevention rules that focus on private benefits to industry as well as on the health and environmental benefits of protecting natural public resources and the environment. We also argue that BLM’s approach to evaluating those health and environmental benefits of reducing methane emissions through the use of the Social Cost of Methane was reasonable and appropriate. The Social Cost of Methane is the best available metric for measuring damages from methane emissions. And it allowed BLM to set restrictions based on the global estimate of damages from methane emissions, which best advances U.S. interests and is consistent with BLM’s statutory mandate.

We submitted comments on the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s environmental impact statement for potential offshore oil drilling and an undersea oil pipeline off Alaska’s northern coast. While expanded drilling in the Arctic presents many climate and public health concerns, BOEM did use the Social Cost of Carbon in assessing environmental impacts of the Liberty Development and Production Plan. Our comments encourage BOEM to continue using the best available methods for the Social Cost of Carbon in future environmental impacts statements, and we also recommended that BOEM use the Interagency Working Group’s Social Cost of Methane to quantify methane damages.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently paused certain requirements to reduce methane leaks and emissions from new oil and gas facilities. In its “notice of data availability” for the proposed stay, EPA claims that the compliance costs of reducing these emissions exceed the benefits to the public and to industry. Our comments argue that EPA manipulated economics to make this claim. EPA undervalued the social cost of methane emissions and claimed that the forgone benefits of the rule are only $5.4 to 23 million per year, when EPA’s original estimates said the rule would create public benefits of $140-180 million per year.