Recent Projects

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) requested feedback from regional electricity regulators on the state of resilience in wholesale markets, efforts underway to ensure grid resilience, and opportunities for future improvement. Their responses make clear that while grid resilience is an issue worthy of continued attention, there is not currently evidence to support mandatory, national or even regional action to address acute resilience concerns. Our comments to FERC argue that it should not seek a “one-size-fits-all” solution for all Regional Transmission Organizations and Independent System Operators (RTOs/ISOs), nor should it consider resilience a “catch-all” concept that opens the door to otherwise unsupported or unnecessary actions.

PJM Interconnection, L.L.C (PJM), a regional electricity transmission organization serving 13 states and Washington D.C., recently submitted a proposal to the federal government requesting changes that would “mitigate” the impact of state climate and energy policies on electricity markets. In our comments to the Federal Energy Regulation Commission (FERC), we argue that PJM’s proposals rest on a faulty premise that state public policies are distorting the economic efficiency of capacity market price signals, which heavily affect how generators enter and exit the market.

In December 2016, pursuant to the Inflation Adjustment Act of 2015, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) finalized a rule that adjusted civil penalties for car manufacturers that violate fuel economy standards, in order to line them up better with inflation. That rule put the penalties at $14 per tenth of a mile per gallon. NHTSA is now proposing a new rule to lower the penalties from $14 per tenth of a mile per gallon back to the previous rate of $5.50 per tenth of a mile per gallon, claiming that the $14 penalty would have a significant negative economic impact. Our May 2018 comments argue that NHTSA should explain why it is justified in reducing the penalty from $14 to $5.50 and consider the forgone benefits when considering whether the civil penalties will have a “negative economic impact.” Because NHTSA has not provided this explanation, the proposed reduction is arbitrary and capricious.

In 2015, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established minimum criteria for the safe disposal of coal combustion residuals. At the time, EPA projected that the new rule would yield substantial health and environmental benefits. EPA now proposes to weaken the requirements of the 2015 rule but insists that doing so “will not change risks to human health and the environment” and thus will have no effect on the projected benefits of the 2015 rule. Our comments explain why EPA cannot reasonably assume that its proposed changes will have no effect on the 2015 rule’s projected benefits.

As the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) continues its rulemaking to repeal the Clean Power Plan, we submitted two sets of comments that challenge EPA’s legal and economic arguments for undoing this important climate policy.

The Bureau of Land Management has proposed to rescind or revise its 2016 rule to limit methane emissions associated with natural gas production. The analysis for the original rule showed it to be hugely beneficial to the public, largely due to the avoided climate damages, for which BLM relied on the IWG’s Social Cost of Methane in the original analysis. Now, BLM has radically altered the analysis for the rule, claiming that the costs outweigh its benefits and the Bureau is justifying its decision to rescind or revise the rule based on this flawed rehashing of the effects, even though many of the problematic elements actually undercut BLM’s justification of the proposal to rescind or revise the rule. We submitted comments focused on this faulty analysis and also submitted joint comments on how BLM failed to appropriately value the Social Cost of Methane and other foregone benefits that would result from the rule’s rescission.

EPA is soliciting comments on the proposed withdrawal of its control techniques guidelines (CTG) for the oil and natural gas industry. EPA supports its proposed withdrawal of the CTG with an analytical memorandum on avoided costs and forgone emission reductions. The agency monetizes the alleged avoided costs down to the dollar, but EPA fails to monetize the forgone emission reductions. Our joint comments illustrate how the proposed withdrawal’s costs outweigh its benefits, by applying the Social Cost of Methane to EPA’s quantified foregone emissions reductions. We argue that by only quantifying the volume of forgone methane reductions, instead of monetizing the associated damages to the environment, public health, and welfare, EPA obscures the very real and readily monetizable negative consequences of its proposed withdrawal.