In the News

A recent peer-reviewed academic paper on transmission planning modeling (two Policy Integrity members are among the authors) has important implications for ongoing policy conversations around grid expansion. The authors’ study method exploits the idea of coordinated planning of several interrelated parts. In their model, the moving parts are transmission (onshore and offshore) as well as generation and storage capacity, and the whole system is co-planned. The paper’s focus is on holistic transmission planning (with case studies for the ISO-NE and PJM grids) that includes accounting for negative environmental externalities. The key takeaways from this paper can help inform ongoing transmission planning policy conversations.

To help achieve the state’s ambitious GHG emission reduction targets, New York is preparing to propose its own version of a cap-and-trade program called New York Cap and Invest. But if New York is to successfully comply with the CLCPA, it cannot rely on New York Cap and Invest alone. New York will need a well-designed scheme of programs and regulatory mechanisms to not only reduce GHG emissions but to also ensure that disadvantaged communities see real air quality improvements. 

If NYCI’s price on GHG emissions will not unlock the necessary emissions reductions for the CLCPA’s first compliance deadline (2030), DEC, NYSERDA, and other state agencies must act immediately to deploy complementary programs that make up the difference. But the state has provided little evidence of such action — and 2030 is nearly upon us. New York must change tack now.

Voluntary carbon markets remain largely unregulated despite these serious integrity issues. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have recently taken small steps in the right direction. But as long as voluntary carbon markets continue to exist, the U.S. government should explore ways to more proactively regulate them.

In a forthcoming law review article, Richard Revesz and I contend that agencies should preemptively rebut challenges under the major questions doctrine by drawing parallels to past agency actions. A recent federal regulation offers a template for this analysis. In its pollution standards for new vehicles issued last week, the Environmental Protection Agency extensively responded to claims that the rule triggers the major questions doctrine. EPA’s analysis is comprehensive and well-researched.

Roughly 1,800 regulators and other energy professionals gathered for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners’ Winter Policy Summit last week where state and federal regulators had a lot to say about the clean energy transition, grid reliability and new EPA rules. On a panel with state public utility commissioners, EPA’s Air Office lead, Joseph Goffman, discussed how to navigate greenhouse gas pollution-reduction rules while maintaining adequate energy resources during the energy transition. He also listened to their concerns about the transition’s pace and scope.

It stands to reason that NHTSA should use the best information possible to set CAFE standards. But, in NHTSA’s enabling statute, the U.S. Congress has made sure that NHTSA cannot do so. The statute pulls wool over the agency’s eyes in two key ways.

Utility regulators now face the challenge of ensuring that the energy utilities they oversee do their parts to effect the energy transition, while continuing to provide safe and adequate service at just and reasonable rates. Moreover, they need to accomplish all this while assuring fairer outcomes for communities that have in the past been persistently and disproportionately harmed by energy infrastructure decisions.

By establishing commonsense measurement rules for the emissions intensity of electrolytic hydrogen, Treasury’s NOPR goes a long way towards ensuring that we don’t accidentally subsidize fossil-fuel-powered electrolysis. Without these rules, it would be easy to confuse fossil-fuel-powered electrolysis with renewables-powered electrolysis. If that were to happen, the most significant climate law in U.S. history would have the perverse effect of subsidizing hydrogen that causes twice as many emissions as the old method of steam methane reforming.

Companies face growing financial risks from climate change. Around the world, investors are demanding more consistent, comparable, and reliable information about these risks so that they can make informed investment decisions. Regulators are listening. In March 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) proposed a rule that would require public companies to include in certain SEC filings specific climate-related disclosures. The SEC might finalize these requirements any day now. In the meantime, California and the European Union (EU) have adopted their own climate-related disclosure regimes. These new regimes require many of the same disclosures and cover many of the same companies as the SEC’s proposed rule.