CleanLaw

For a full transcript of this recording please click here http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Samantha-Ross-and-Hana-Transcript.pdf In this episode our staff attorney Hana Vizcarra talks with Samantha Ross, former Chief of Staff and Special Counsel at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and former Special Counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission. They discuss the importance of assurance in strengthening public company sustainability and climate disclosures. https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/

In this episode our EELP Legal Fellow Laura Bloomer speaks with Gretchen Goldman, Research Director for the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, about the Trump administration’s changes to EPA’s process for reviewing the national ambient air quality standards, or NAAQS. They discuss the importance of revising these standards to keep pace with current science, and the many ways in which Trump’s EPA is undermining the ongoing reviews of air quality standards for ozone and particulate matter. Transcript https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Laura-and-Gretchen-for-Publishing.pdf

Hana Vizcarra speaks with Erik Landry, SM ’18 and research associate in the MIT Office of the Vice President for Research. They talk about energy companies’ use of scenarios in climate-related financial disclosure and discuss his new white paper. "In 2017, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), established by the G20 Financial Stability Board, provided a guiding framework and set of recommendations to promote that kind of consistency. However, the use of scenario analysis to describe the resilience of a company’s strategy, as recommended by the TCFD, still represents a significant challenge for companies. MIT, with its extensive experience in analysis of climate futures, saw this as an opportunity to shed some light on the task." Download the full MIT Report, Climate-Related Financial Disclosures: The Use of Scenarios, here http://news.mit.edu/2019/climate-financial-disclosures-1106 For a full transcript of this conversation please click here http://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/Hana-and-Erik-Landry-Transcription-for-Website.pdf Our website is here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu

In this episode, Caitlin and Joe talk about their white paper on the Repeal of the Clean Power Plan and the Affordable Clean Energy Rule. They also discuss the litigation challenging the repeal and new rule, with updates including petitioners’ motion to hold the case in abeyance pending EPA's issuing the final New Source Review rule, which was initially included in the ACE proposal. The other papers and podcast mentioned in this episode are listed on our website https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-caitlin-mccoy-and-joe-goffman-on-the-affordable-clean-energy-rule/ Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Goffman-McCoy-ACE-Transcript.pdf

Hana Vizcarra talks with Jesse Keenan, a social scientist and lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School in Science, Technology and Public Policy.They discuss climate-related data, financing community development to encourage adaptation, and recent work about what drives coastal adaptation decisions that communities make. Jesse has several recent papers on these topics, which you can find on our website https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/cleanlaw-hana-vizcarra-interviews-jesse-keenan-on-climate-adaptation-and-finance/ Transcript of this episode https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Vizcarra-Keenan-Transcript.pdf

In this episode Joe speaks with climate economist Gernot Wagner about his latest paper (with co-authors) showing how climate-economic modeling can account not only for predicted damages linked to climate change but also for the uncertainty and risk associated with climate change. Gernot also talks about his work with the late Martin Weitzman, one of the most influential climate and environmental economists who ever lived. Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-28-Joe-Gernot-Climate-Economics.pdf

In this episode Joe Goffman, our Executive Director, talks with Kathy Fallon Lambert, Senior Advisor with The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Co-founder of the Science Policy Exchange. Kathy was part of a team of researchers who evaluated the Regulatory Impact Analysis for EPA’s Affordable Clean Energy rule, to determine whether it incorporates the best available information and whether its predictions are fully supportable. She and her colleagues also performed their own analysis using EPA data. Using more realistic assumptions than EPA used they found that EPA overstated the likely benefits of ACE and that ACE could lead to increased pollution in several states. Kathy and Joe discuss EPA’s assumptions in the RIA, the impact of EPA’s current and expected changes to New Source Review that EPA failed to account for, and EPA’s inconsistency in calculating the benefits of reducing fine particle concentrations. Read the study here https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/c-change/news/carbon-standards-re-examined/ Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-27-Joe-Kathy-ACE-MATS.pdf

In this episode our executive director Joe Goffman speaks again with Clean Air Task Force senior counsel Jonathan Lewis about biofuels. They discuss the 5 lessons policy-makers seeking to promote innovation can learn from the failure of the renewable fuel standard as a policy, why aviation is a critical transportation market to target for emissions reductions, and the low carbon fuel standards of California and British Columbia. Jonathan joined us in August for the first of this two part series. See CATF bioenergy work here www.catf.us/work/bioenergy/. Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/CleanLaw-26-Joe-Jon-Lewis-biofuels-2.pdf

In this episode Joe Goffman, our Executive Director, talks with our Climate, Clean Air and Energy Fellow Caitlin McCoy about part one of the clean car rule rollback. They discuss EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s final rule, issued on September 19th, that preempts California’s greenhouse gas standards and withdraws California’s Clean Air Act waiver. Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/CleanLaw-25-Joe-Caitlin-Cali-Waiver.pdf

In this episode of CleanLaw Joe Goffman speaks with Clean Air Task Force senior counsel Jonathan Lewis about bioenergy. They discuss the history of biofuel mandates, the challenges of lifecycle analysis, the problems associated with land-use, the difficulty in meeting annual mandates, and talk about what US biofuel policy should really be focused on. At around the 30-minute mark the conversation moves from the transportation sector to power generation. In September we'll publish Part II of this conversation: a deeper discussion on the Renewable Fuel Standard program, and lessons we've learned from this policy. See CATF bioenergy work here https://www.catf.us/work/bioenergy/ Transcript available here https://eelp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Joe-and-Jon-Biofuels-1-transcript.pdf