Policy Integrity in the News

Supreme Court’s NEPA Ruling Will Reshape FERC Climate Fights

2025-07-11T13:37:00+00:00

Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity, said the D.C. Circuit's ruling in Sabal Trail was in line with what the Supreme Court's liberal minority advocated in their concurring opinion. Those justices argued that the courts should start by looking at the authorizing statute for an agency and make sure the scope of FERC's NEPA review was "coextensive." "You can see this distinction best where the D.C. Circuit does not require FERC to examine LNG export consumption emissions, because that is under DOE's jurisdiction, not FERC's," Danis wrote in an email. She added that the Supreme Court's decision mostly did not address what the Surface Transportation Board's regulation required.

Source: E&E News

Overview of the Amicus Briefs Filed in Our Tariff Case

2025-07-10T15:22:00+00:00

IPI is a research institute focused on administrative law. Professor Richard L. Revesz (NYU), the principal author, is a leading expert on administrative law and regulation. The brief is a thorough and compelling discussion of why Trump's use of IEEPA to impose massive tariffs runs afoul of the major questions doctrine.

Source: Reason

CAFC Receives 5 Amicus Briefs in Support of Suit Against IEEPA Tariffs

2025-07-09T15:18:00+00:00

NYU's Institute for Policy Integrity's brief narrowly focused on the major questions doctrine, which is a judicial principle standing for the proposition that Congress must explicitly let the Executive regulate on issues of massive political and economic significance. The institute clarified the precise standard the Supreme Court uses for invoking the doctrine, then argued that Trump's tariffs clear that standard.

Source: Trade Law Daily

Trump Tariff Fights Put Spotlight on Major Questions Doctrine

2025-07-09T15:16:00+00:00

In the years since the West Virginia and Nebraska decisions, a lot of district and appellate courts have applied the doctrine very broadly, according to Max Sarinsky, an adjunct clinical professor at New York University School of Law. They've been using the doctrine to strike down agency actions that were economically and politically significant, regardless of the context and the agency's regulatory history, "which I just don't think is a fair characterization of West Virginia at all," he said.

Source: Law360

Load Growth, Plant Retirements Could Drive 100x Increase in Blackouts by 2030: DOE

2025-07-08T15:03:00+00:00

DOE’s analysis “doesn’t support President Trump’s strategy of using emergency declarations to stop power plants from carrying through with their plans to retire,” said Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Source: Utility Dive

DOE Plays Out Worst-Case Scenarios for US Grid

2025-07-08T14:53:00+00:00

Jennifer Danis, federal energy policy director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, questioned whether the analysis supports emergency declarations from the administration ordering aging coal and gas plants to halt their retirement plans.

Source: E&E News

Loper, Stare Decisis, & the Endangered Species Act

2025-07-02T17:04:00+00:00

Two commenters from the NYU School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity have a piece on the Yale Notice & Comment blog challenging the Trump Administration’s invocation of Loper Bright as a nondiscretionary basis to rescind the existing regulatory definition of “harm” as it applies to the Endangered Species Act.

Source: AFP Foundation

MARC Confronts Public Perception, Affordability, ‘Post-DEI’ and Nuclear Options

2025-07-02T16:59:00+00:00

Michelle Fleurantin, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity think tank at the New York University School of Law, pushed back against the notion that the energy industry exists in a “post-DEI” world. However, she said it’s “scary and challenging” for regulators to conduct targeted outreach for historically disadvantaged ratepayers right now.

Source: RTO Insider

What Loper Bright and Statutory Stare Decisis Mean for Deregulation

2025-07-01T17:09:00+00:00

In eliminating the Chevron doctrine, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo changed the landscape of administrative law in ways that courts, litigants, and legal scholars are still sorting out a year later. Loper Bright held that courts should exercise “independent judgment” to determine the “best reading” of statutory language without deferring to agencies’ interpretations.

Source: Yale Journal on Regulation

Ad Law Reading Room: “New Challenges for Federal Regulations: Executive Branch Responses,” by Richard Revesz

2025-07-01T17:08:00+00:00

As readers of this blog are well aware, agencies operate within an increasingly hostile judicial review environment. From Loper Bright to the major questions doctrine, Ohio v. EPA and beyond, federal regulators face an expanding array of hurdles. How are agencies changing their own behavior in response? Adding to the growing body of scholarship asking that question, Revesz’s article is an engaging and important contribution. With a focus on the final two years of the Biden administration, “New Challenges for Federal Regulations” is rich with data and detailed case studies. It explores not only what agencies have done but also what they could do better. In doing so, it adds considerably to our understanding of the present-day administrative state.

Source: Yale Journal on Regulation

Lawyers Argue DOE Proposals to Rescind Efficiency Rules Violate APA

2025-06-25T14:55:00+00:00

The Trump administration has “broken from the longstanding -- and legally-mandated -- practice of providing a detailed proposal, instead issuing brief proposals containing little or no information about the agency’s rationale for exercising its discretion,” New York University law school’s Institute for Policy Integrity (IPI) lawyers Bridget Pals and Max Sarinsky write in a report released earlier this month about dozens of May 12 proposals to undo existing energy and water efficiency standards and related regulations.

Source: Inside EPA

Aligning Research With Energy Decision Making

2025-06-25T14:51:00+00:00

Beyond questions of resource management, infrastructure adaptation and development present another critical challenge for the energy transition. In our Q&A with Jennifer Danis, Federal Energy Policy Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law, we spoke about the practical and regulatory differences between gas and electricity infrastructure in the United States.

Source: Nature Energy

The Gas Infrastructure Shift in the United States

2025-06-25T14:50:00+00:00

Jennifer Danis, expert in environmental and energy law and Federal Energy Policy Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity (New York University School of Law), talks to Nature Energy about shifts in the gas infrastructure landscape of the United States, highlighting gaps and opportunities for research and policy to be better aligned for positive change.

Source: Nature Energy

EPA Leaves Social Cost of Carbon on the Cutting-Room Floor

2025-06-23T15:46:00+00:00

The absence of a social cost of carbon, while expected, means the metrics aren’t likely to pop up in any future Trump administration rule. “If they’re not going to use it here, they’re not going to use it anywhere,” said Jason Schwartz, legal director for the Institute for Policy Integrity.

Source: E&E News

SBTi Got More Than 850 Comments on Its New Net-Zero Standard. Now What?

2025-06-20T17:19:00+00:00

The Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University, for example, came down on the side of letting corporations count high-quality carbon removal toward their emissions reduction goals, saying this would help grow the available market. “SBTi could incentivize companies to invest in high-quality, durable carbon dioxide removal to address their residual emissions, as they simultaneously work to reduce their emissions as much as possible by their net-zero target dates,” the institute said. The Institute cautions that claims related to those investments must be made judiciously, given current scrutiny of corporation climate commitments, and that clarity from SBTi would help.

Source: Trellis

Federal Circuit Sets Quick Schedule for Trump Tariff Constitutional Challenge

2025-06-16T17:04:00+00:00

The Federal Circuit today issued a detailed scheduling order expedited resolution of the constitutional challenge to President Trump's global tariff program. V.O.S. Selections, Inc. v. Trump, Nos. 2025-1812, 2025-1813 (Fed. Cir. June 13, 2025).

Source: Patently-O

Trump Administration Set to Argue US Power Plant Emissions Are Insignificant, Should Dodge Climate Regulations

2025-06-16T17:02:00+00:00

U.S. power plants have been among the top emitters in the world since 1990, accounting for 5% of all emissions that cause global warming. The scale was highlighted by Jason Schwartz, co-author of a report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. A single year of pollution in 2022 is expected to result in 5,300 deaths in the United States from air pollution over the next few decades, according to the report, along with $370 billion in global damages, including $225 billion in medical expenses and $75 billion in lost labor productivity.

Source: Sigma Earth

Inside the EPA’s Attempt to Roll Back Climate Regulation

2025-06-13T17:11:00+00:00

“The EPA is proposing that the Clean Air Act requires it to make a finding that [greenhouse gas] emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution, as a predicate to regulating [greenhouse gas] emissions from those plants,” states the draft rule. Jason Schwartz, legal director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University Law School, said the statutory language was “pretty clear that you don't need pollutant-specific findings.”

Source: Scientific American

EPA Slices and Dices Stats to Treat Pollution as ‘Insignificant’

2025-06-12T19:14:00+00:00

President Donald Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is proposing “to repeal all greenhouse gas emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants” because it finds that their emissions “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.” This claim is surprising: The power sector is responsible for roughly a quarter of US greenhouse gas emissions and is the largest industrial emitter. The EPA’s workaround is to argue that a sector that emits only 3% of global emissions is too little to matter. But while the EPA is playing with fractions, it’s ignoring facts. Even one year of US power-sector greenhouse gas emissions will cause hundreds of billions of dollars in economic damages and thousands of premature deaths from climate effects.

Source: Bloomberg Law

How EPA Justifies Not Regulating Climate Pollution From Power Plants

2025-06-12T19:01:00+00:00

Even leaving aside global effects, these emissions have a real impact on Americans’ lives, argued Richard Revesz, who helmed the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Biden administration. Revesz, who has since returned to New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, pointed to a recent institute report calculating around 5,300 premature deaths related to high temperatures and wildfire smoke are caused per year by power sector greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: Politico Pro