Recent Projects

Vehicle fuel economy standards set by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration (NHTSA) help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the United States by making cars more fuel efficient. Our comments on the reconsideration argue that NHTSA should value the social cost of those emissions as robustly as possible, as they have done in the past. We encourage NHTSA to consider the social cost of greenhouse gases in both the rule’s Environmental Impact Statement and Regulatory Impact Analysis, and that it should use estimates considering global damages of climate change using a three percent or lower discount rate.

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.

The Department of Labor’s Fiduciary Rule requires investment advisors to serve the best interests of their retiree clients. In August 2017, Labor proposed to stay the rule’s enforcement provisions. In our comments on the proposed delay, we argue that the delay violates basic administrative law principles.

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.

The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM’s) Waste Prevention Rule, enacted on November 18, 2016, sought to prevent oil and gas companies from wasting natural gas produced on public land. In June 2017, BLM stayed the rule by indefinitely postponing key compliance deadlines. In response, the states of California and New Mexico as well as several environmental organizations filed suit against BLM in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. In our amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs, we argue that BLM failed to provide a reasoned explanation for the stay, as required by the Administrative Procedure Act, because BLM ignored the forgone benefits of the Waste Prevention Rule.

In public comments to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, we highlight some critical problems with the agency’s cost-benefit analysis in its proposed revocation of standards to protect workers from exposure to beryllium. These ancillary standards were designed to protect workers in the construction and shipyard sectors.

Many federal agencies are requesting the public’s suggestions for rules to repeal or reform, tacitly implying that most regulations stifle economic growth. In comments to several agencies, we argue that regulatory review should consider the public benefits of regulation, not just the costs to regulated industries, and should prioritize review of rules for which actual costs and benefits diverge significantly from predicted costs and benefits.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is proposing to update its regulations on the rulemaking process, which include amendments to how it accepts and considers public petitions for rulemaking. While the proposed changes are all appropriate, we offer additional changes that would increase government transparency in our comments to the agency.

In 2016, EPA issued a rule to decrease methane and volatile organic compound emissions from new, modified, and reconstructed sources in the oil and natural gas sector. EPA has now proposed to suspend some of the rule’s compliance obligations for two years while the agency decides whether and how to revise those requirements. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected an earlier attempt by EPA to stay the methane rule for 90 days, and our comments argue that the new proposal is similarly unlawful.