Environmental Cost Determination: Improving and Modernizing Cost-Benefit Analysis in Rulemaking Process
Course Details
- smart_display Format
On-Demand
- signal_cellular_alt Difficulty Level
- work Practice Area
Environmental
- event Date
Tuesday, February 22, 2022
- schedule Time
1:00 p.m. ET./10:00 a.m. PT
- timer Program Length
90 minutes
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This 90-minute webinar is eligible in most states for 1.5 CLE credits.
This CLE course will focus on key issues associated with the cost-benefit analysis used to evaluate environmental regulations during the rulemaking process.
Mr. Sahay directs legal and policy strategy on climate, environmental, sustainability issues at the federal, state, and international levels. He represents clients in a variety of industries, helping them shape laws through legislative and regulatory advocacy, then helping them maximize value under established legal frameworks by obtaining regulatory approvals and ensuring regulatory compliance. Mr. Sahay previously served as in-house counsel to the largest renewable fuels producer in the world, and as an acting general counsel of the largest renewable fuels trade association.
Mr. Leopold advises and defends clients across industries with the strategic insights as former General Counsel for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, former General Counsel for the Florida Department of Environmental Protection and a former environmental litigator at the U.S. Department of Justice. He provides clients with in-depth experience and knowledge respecting the pivotal recent changes in environmental regulation. As EPA General Counsel, he counseled on the development and defense of virtually every significant regulation proposed by EPA since 2017 and was personally involved in the highest profile environmental cases during that time, including two precedent setting environmental cases in the Supreme Court, County of Maui v. Hawaii Wildlife Fund and Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Christian. At EPA, Mr. Leopold helped draft the Affordable Clean Energy Rule (the repeal and replacement of the Clean Power Plan) and the Navigable Waters Protection Rule (the new definition of the Waters of the United States (WOTUS)), the Clean Water Act Section 401 Certification Rule, the Safe Affordable Fuel-Efficient (SAFE) Vehicles Rule (regulating tailpipe emissions from passenger cars and light duty trucks), and other rulemakings. Additionally, Mr. Leopold served as the chief attorney at the Florida Department of Environmental Protection advising on state policy and regulatory matters in regard to air, water, waste and public lands for the Department Secretary and the Governor’s Office. In light of this experience, he is able to provide deep insight into the regulatory processes of federal and state agencies in advising clients in permitting, compliance, and enforcement defense matters.
Mr. McGuffey specializes in the Clean Air Act and helps clients obtain necessary permits, solve compliance challenges, and minimize enforcement risk. He has focused almost exclusively on air law since starting his practice in 2003. During that time, he has represented electric utility, landfill, manufacturing, and other industrial clients in connection with important air quality issues arising out of federal and state regulations governing the construction and operation of stationary sources of air emissions. Mr. McGuffey helps his clients obtain necessary permits, comply with applicable regulations, respond to enforcement actions, and participate in new rulemaking efforts at the state and federal levels. He also has extensive experience in litigation over air regulations.
Mr. Stifter leads quantitative economic research and analysis into issues arising in litigation, insurance claims, environmental regulation and enforcement, natural resource management, and business decisions affected by contingent liabilities. He regularly provides privileged consulting and expert testimony for attorneys involved with commercial, environmental, and toxic tort litigation. Mr. Stifter’s expertise is applying microeconomics, econometrics, valuation methods, and statistics to evaluate liability and causation, quantify impact, and determine appropriate compensatory damages. His experience encompasses a wide variety of issues: diminution of property values; business torts (breach of contract, trade secrets, fraud, unfair competition, product defect); commercial property damage (business disruption, competitive disadvantage, cargo losses); natural resource damages (NRD); environmental enforcement; property rights; bodily injury/wrongful death; class certification issues; antitrust and competition; and discriminatory practices.
The development and implementation of environmental regulations inevitably imposes economic costs that must be considered, with or without formal cost-benefit techniques. A cost-benefit analysis, whether formal or informal, does for government what the market does for business: it compares the benefits of a public policy to the costs of that policy. The two sides of the ledger, however, raise different issues.
In theory, the cost side of cost-benefit analysis should be relatively straightforward, since it typically involves valuing the cost of the additional control measures required, which can often be easily reduced to a monetary value. However, in practice, valuing costs can be difficult, particularly where the policy in question allows some flexibility in the measures used to comply or whether the policy requires new techniques not widely used before.
The next step in the analysis can be even more challenging: monetizing the benefits achieved by the regulation. Since there are no natural "prices" for a healthy environment, cost-benefit analysis requires the creation of artificial ones that depend on a wide variety of assumptions about the value of certain human health and environmental outcomes.
Finally, the costs and benefits of a policy frequently occur at different times and at a different scope. Often, costs are incurred today or in the near future to prevent harm in the more distant future. When the analysis spans several years, future costs and benefits are discounted or treated as equivalent to money in today's dollars, requiring an assumption about the time value of money that raises questions about what interest rate is most appropriate to use. In addition, the scope of costs is typically easy to define, based on the activities subject to the regulation, whereas the scope of the benefits may be more difficult to delineate, as benefits may accrue locally, regionally, nationally, or even globally.
Listen as our expert panel discusses the state of cost-benefit determinations in environmental regulations and how the current administration's policies may affect the analysis of these decisions.
- Cost-benefit determinations and analysis
- Cost projections
- Benefit analysis
- Impact of time and scope
- Alternative evaluations
- Biden administration policies
The panel will address these and other topics:
- What are the key issues that typically arise in cost-benefit evaluations of environmental regulations, and what are the legal implications of those issues?
- What are some examples of how cost-benefit analyses have had a direct impact on environmental policy?
- What is the current policy by the Biden administration in evaluating the costs and benefits of environmental regulations?
- How can the costs and benefits of regulation be monetized?
- How does time and scope affect evaluations of costs and benefits?
- What are alternative methods to assigning prices or costs associated with environmental regulations?
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