Recent Projects

In 2020, the Bureau of Land Management approved an extraction plan known as the Willow Master Development Plan, which would authorize oil giant ConocoPhillips to drill in Alaska’s North Slope for 30 years. But a federal court blocked the Plan from going into effect because BLM failed to account for several important environmental considerations, and in June, BLM released a draft supplemental environmental impact statement that improves upon the agency’s analysis and now finds that the Project will cause billions upon billions of dollars in climate damage. We submitted comments recognizing the significance of those climate damages and arguing that BLM continues to undervalue climate costs while overvaluing economic benefits. In October 2022, we filed an additional comment letter presenting our original economic modeling that further evinces the flaws in BLM's substitution analysis.

In February, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission proposed two policy statements that called for the consideration of climate impacts in pipeline certificate proceedings. In April, we filed two comments letters on these proposed policy statements, including one letter filed jointly with over two dozen legal scholars rebutting arguments that the Commission lacks authority to consider climate effects in its oversight of natural gas infrastructure under the Natural Gas Act and, relatedly, that the proposed policy statements implicate the major questions doctrine. Today, we submitted supplemental comments rebutting arguments that the Supreme Court’s recent decision on the major questions doctrine in West Virginia v. EPA somehow affects the Commission’s ability to finalize its proposed policy statements.

We submitted comments urging DOE to clarify how it will distribute Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) project funding and to enhance program transparency. We encourage DOE to more specifically detail how it will evaluate applications and to offer a more precise definition of what "community benefits" it hopes to achieve. We also suggest that DOE require project applicants to submit cost-benefit analyses so that the agency can better compare projects when making funding decisions.

Together with partner groups, we submitted joint comments to the Department of Energy (DOE) on its proposed rule to strengthen energy conservation standards for consumer furnaces. Our comments applaud the agency for appropriately applying the social cost of greenhouse gases to estimate the climate benefits of the proposed standards, even though the standards would be cost-benefit justified without considering any climate benefits. We also expand upon DOE's justifications for adopting a global damages valuation and for the range of discount rates it applies to climate effects.

In July, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) released its proposed five-year offshore leasing plan, which contemplates scheduling anywhere from zero to eleven lease sales over the coming half-decade. As part of that proposal, BOEM conducts a cost-benefit analysis in which it finds net benefits from offshore leasing, but recognizes uncertainty and specifically calls for comment on this analysis.

In response to this call for comments, Policy Integrity submitted two original reports offering extensive feedback on BOEM’s cost-benefit analysis. As detailed in those reports, BOEM’s analysis severely understates the costs of OCS leasing—particularly the climate costs. Our reports offer original analysis and modeling finding that, properly considered, the climate costs of offshore leasing alone may exceed the total benefits from that leasing.

The Connecticut Public Utilities Regulatory Authority (PURA) issued a straw program design for electric storage. We submitted comments that support PURA's efforts to make energy storage part of its overarching decarbonization agenda and provide feedback. It is important, as we explain, that PURA take into account the potential emissions consequences of energy storage operations in designing its performance-based incentive.