Recent Projects

In December 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency finalized a regulation to strengthen its greenhouse gas emission standards for light-duty vehicles. Although regulated automakers support EPA’s approach, a group of states and oil-and-gas companies have challenged the standards in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, claiming that the standards misapply economic principles and violate the major questions doctrine. In our amicus brief, we explain that EPA’s regulation is consistent with sound economics and established practice.

We submitted comments to the Department of Energy (DOE) on its proposed rule to strengthen energy conservation standards for new and renovated federal buildings. Our comments offer support for the agency's choice to apply the social cost of greenhouse gases to estimate the climate effects of the proposed standards. We also suggest that DOE apply additional analysis using draft updated climate-damage valuations that the Environmental Protection Agency recently released.

This month, EPA restored the legal foundation for regulating emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) from coal- and oil-fired power plants under section 112 of the Clean Air Act. Policy Integrity has long recommended that EPA adopt such an approach that considers unquantified and ancillary effects, as is consistent with the best economic practices and the law, including through our comments on the 2022 proposed rule and an amicus brief opposing the 2020 finding. 

We submitted comments to the Federal Acquisition Regulatory Council (FAR Council) on ways to strengthen its proposed rule that would require certain categories of federal contractors to disclose their greenhouse gas emissions and climate-related financial risk, and in some cases set science-based targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

Together with a coalition of environmental groups, we submitted comments to EPA on its draft update to the social cost of greenhouse gas estimates of climate damage. We commended the agency's extraordinary advances and recommended ways to further improve the accuracy of the metrics.

In December 2022, EPA issued a Supplemental Proposal to update, strengthen, and expand its proposed standards to regulate methane emissions from new and existing sources in the oil and natural gas sector. We submitted comments on EPA’s Supplemental Proposal and underlying Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) recommending that EPA strengthen its RIA to more fully capture the impacts of these standards by: (1) extending the timeframe of its analysis to quantify net benefits past 2035, (2) monetizing ozone health benefits related to methane emissions reductions, (3) better monetizing and quantifying co-benefits, and (4) better quantifying the impacts of the super-emitter response program or using a breakeven analysis if further quantification is not possible. We further recommended that EPA expand its distributional analysis of the impacts of the rule.

On October 20 2022, the FTC voted to grant the Institute for Policy Integrity’s petition for rulemaking and issue an Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Unfair or Deceptive Fees Trade Regulation Rule. Commissioner Christine S. Wilson issued a dissenting statement in which she raised major questions doctrine concerns and asked for precedent that supports FTC's authority to promulgate this rule. We submitted a letter responding to Commissioner Wilson’s concern and providing regulatory antecedents supporting the FTC’s authority. In this letter, Policy Integrity shows that FTC's rule would not be unheralded nor represent a transformative change in the agency's authority, and therefore, it would not implicate the major questions doctrine.

Together with partner groups, we submitted joint comments to the Department of Energy (DOE) on its proposed rule to strengthen energy conservation standards for circulator pumps. Our comments applaud the agency for appropriately applying the social cost of greenhouse gases to estimate the climate benefits of the proposed standards. We also suggest that DOE apply additional analysis using draft updated climate-damage valuations that the Environmental Protection Agency recently released.