Recent Projects

We recently submitted comments on Vermont’s standard offer program, which is designed to support smaller-scale renewable energy projects. One component of the standard offer program compensates generators that provide benefits to grid operation and management. In the past, the Vermont Public Utilities Commission has focused its view of these benefits to reward only generators that relieve transmission constraints. However, our comments urge the PUC to take a broader view of benefits to grid operation and include resilience benefits and avoiding climate effects on the grid. We cite our July 2018 report, Toward Resilience, to give the PUC more guidance on how to think about and value grid resilience. We also recommend that, when more broadly assessing the entire standard offer program’s benefits, the PUC should monetize any avoided climate externalities by using the social cost of greenhouse gases.

We recently submitted comments to the Virginia State Corporation Commission on the integrated resource plan (IRP) of the Appalachian Power Company. These comments focus on how the Commission should require utilities to analyze climate impacts when planning how to balance future fossil fuel-based electricity generation against renewable energy options. Under the Virginia Code, the Commission is required to consider whether IRPs are “reasonable” and “in the public interest.” We make the case that climate damages fall squarely within the realm of public interest. Therefore, we argue that the Commission should require electric utilities to more transparently quantify the greenhouse gas emissions of alternatives, and to monetize the associated climate damages using the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gas metrics. Such analysis is necessary to allow the Commission to rationally identify the most efficient plan option that advances social welfare for Virginia, and to allow ratepayers and citizens to better understand the environmental effects of the portfolios chosen.

A United States District Judge recently ruled that the Department of Education’s repeated delays of the Borrower Defense Rule were illegal. We submitted an amicus brief in this case. This 2016 regulation was designed to help students who have been defrauded by for-profit educational institutions discharge their federal student loans. Under Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Department of Education delayed implementation of the Borrower Defense Rule three times, prompting a legal challenge.

Costofcarbon.org is now home to our ongoing work on the social cost of carbon (SCC) in U.S. state policy. The domain, which housed SCC-focused research until 2015, has been renovated and refocused to reflect the most important and relevant developments in the application of the SCC in decisionmaking. It includes an easy-to-navigate version of our FAQ Guide for state policymakers, information on state-specific use of the SCC, helpful resources, and more. Our hope is to bring attention to the ways that the SCC continues to be a critical tool used by policymakers in a number of areas, from electricity rate design, to cap-and-trade programs, to fossil fuel royalty rates. A diverse array of stakeholders can benefit from the site’s information and we invite feedback from regulators, partners, and the public on new proceedings that make use of the SCC or matters in which the SCC might be applicable.

In June 2018, the New York State Department of Public Service and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority released the New York State Energy Storage Roadmap, outlining a series of recommended approaches to achieve Governor Cuomo’s statewide energy storage target of 1,500 MW by 2025. Our comments, based on our Managing the Future of Energy Storage report, generally support the overall approach to reward energy storage systems for all the values they can bring to the electric system, to allow dual participation in both wholesale and retail electricity markets, and to improve price signals to maximize the benefits of energy storage systems.

We recently submitted comments to the Department of the Interior’s Royalty Policy Committee (“RPC”) in advance of the Committee’s third public meeting of the year. As we have discussed in past papers and public comments, existing royalty rates fail to account for the full costs of fossil fuel production, including local and global air pollution.

We recently submitted comments about to the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, which is reviewing its rules on electric resource planning (“ERP”). Our comments aim is to ensure that a proper valuation of externalities is integrated into Colorado’s ERP process, and we suggest using the Social Cost of Carbon to monetize greenhouse gas externalities.

Input from the Institute for Policy Integrity helped encourage Nevada to modernize its energy policymaking by accounting for the impacts of carbon pollution in key electric utility planning decisions. At the recommendation of Policy Integrity and partner groups, the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada recently included language on the Obama-era Interagency Work Group’s Social Cost of Carbon (SCC) in new rules governing utilities’ resource plans.Utilities will now have to analyze and clearly disclose the damages caused by climate change when evaluating alternative long-term resource plans. This information will be used by utilities and the Commission when selecting their preferred resource plan.

In May 2018, EPA proposed to repeal significant portions of the Chemical Disaster Rule, a rule that would have improved safety procedures at chemical plants. In response, we submitted comments highlighting the ways in which this proposed deregulatory action is arbitrary and capricious

Claiming an unsubstantiated need to improve consistency and transparency in its economic analyses, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering revisions to how it weighs costs and benefits in rulemakings. In our comments to EPA, we argue that this proposal is searching for a problem that does not exist. In implying that the agency’s past analyses have somehow inappropriately considered costs and benefits, EPA relies on vague or false assumptions and misleading examples. In fact, through 2016, EPA’s past analyses of regulatory costs and benefits were among the most thorough, consistent, and transparent regulatory impact analyses conducted in the federal government and had justified some of the most net beneficial rules in the history of federal regulation.