In the Media – Page 100 – Environmental and Energy Law Program

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E&E News

Greens plot court strategy for stronger soot limits

Environmental groups said they are prepared to sue EPA over its proposal to leave national soot standards unchanged, a move that conflicts with scientific evidence and career staff calls for stronger restrictions on fine particulate matter.

April 15, 2020

The Hill

EPA retains Obama-era air quality standards despite staff questions of adequacy

“It’s not just a bad result, it’s a fouled process that led to the result,” said Joseph Goffman, an Obama administration EPA official who is now the executive director of Harvard Law’s Environmental and Energy Law Program.

April 15, 2020

Utility Dive

Southwest Generation purchase of Xcel gas plant to raise JPMorgan affiliation question again at FERC

The argument that FERC’s failure to define the relationship may open a loophole for market manipulation is “plausible,” Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard told Utility Dive in an email, though he’s not sure how real and present that threat may be.

April 10, 2020

S&P Global

Coronavirus threatens to derail major US EPA energy and climate rollbacks

“But litigation takes time, and we’re starting to get close to the period of the calendar where if a new administration is elected in November there may still be a lot of D.C. Circuit cases pending that the new administration can seek abeyances in,” Goffman said in an interview.

April 9, 2020

Scientific American

Several States, Environmental Groups Vow to Sue Over Car Pollution Rollback

Lawsuits against the new rules will likely be rooted in the Administrative Procedure Act, which governs federal rulemaking, said Caitlin McCoy, a climate, clean air and energy fellow at Harvard Law School.

April 9, 2020

In This Climate

How we solved acid rain

As early as the 1930s, lakes in the Adirondacks began registering fish loss. By the 1980s, visible forest dieback turned the attention of the United States to the acid rain crisis. Today, scientists are observing the biological recovery of the region.

April 9, 2020

Gutting fuel economy standards during a pandemic is peak Trump

“But when we look at the numbers,” Caitlin McCoy, a staff attorney at Harvard’s Environmental & Energy Law Program, wrote in an analysis of the rule, “the vehicle purchase price would be reduced by $977 to $1,083 relative to the Obama rules, but the increased price at the pump of driving less fuel-efficient vehicles would be $1,423 to $1,461 (at 3% discount rate).” Even at a higher 7 percent discount rate, increased fuel costs outweigh vehicles savings in the most optimistic scenario.

April 9, 2020

Bloomberg

EPA Chief Says Virus-Linked Looser Enforcement ‘Very Mild’

Cynthia Giles, who held Bodine’s post at the EPA under the Obama administration, also said she recognizes the EPA must respond to what is clearly “a very unusual situation today.”

April 9, 2020

Politico

Fight over HFCs rears its head again

BREAKING UP IS HARD TO DO: Utilities interested in ditching the power markets may find it harder than they would like, according to a new memo by utility attorney Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at Harvard Law School. FERC’s order last year to PJM Interconnection setting a minimum offer price in its capacity auction, an effort to nullify state subsidies to renewable and nuclear generators that Peskoe opposed, triggered several statewide efforts to consider leaving either PJM or ISO-New England. Peskoe examines recent cases and finds that FERC may have the ability to review — and reject — a utility request to leave its market. “I conclude that withdrawal is legally plausible, but FERC could block withdrawal, and it might be more inclined to do so in response to a protest filed by an ISO-NE transmission owner,” he writes.

April 9, 2020