YSE Professors Help Federal Government Account for Environment in Regulatory System
YSE Professors Eli Fenichel and Kenneth Gillingham played key roles in updating a White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) guide on how federal agencies calculate their regulations’ benefits and costs to account more fully for the environment.
All major regulations must undergo benefit-cost analysis (BCA), and the U.S. executive branch is responsible for doing BCA for programs and regulations. Fenichel, Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, worked to update Circular No. A-4, which is the federal government’s primary document for guiding BCA and was last revised in 2003. Circulars are the highest-level guidance issued by OMB.
“This document has tremendous influence over what government agencies consider, how they consider it, when they make regulatory decisions, and also over the ability of the government to defend or be challenged in court over those decisions,” Fenichel said.
The new update references "ecosystem services" 18 times and "environmental" 74 times, including five mentions of "environmental justice." The document is supported by new Guidance for Assessment Changes to Environmental and Ecosystem Services in benefit-costs analysis.
While on leave to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), which works closely with the OMB, Fenichel was central to this historic effort to modernize regulatory guidance and helped draft these updates. The documents go through extensive public comment and peer review. Gillingham, professor of environmental and energy economics, was one of the official peer reviewers on the critical document. Yale Law Professor Zach Liscow led an update of a related federal guidance for BCA for programs and operation, OMB Circular A-94 (last revised in 1992), which Fenichel also helped to revise.
In a recent White House roundtable focusing on the first-of-its-kind report "Advancing the Frontiers of Benefit Cost Analysis: Federal Priorities and Directions for Future Research," Fenichel discussed the effort to develop environmental economic accounts to track the quantity and quality of natural resources, including air, water, land, wildlife, pollinators, energy, minerals, soils, forests, wetlands, environmental activities, urban green space, and other environmental assets.
"It was great to see projects from agencies with expertise in physical and natural sciences working with agencies with expertise in social science," Fenichel said at the roundtable. "We really need this systematic viewpoint. The natural capital accounts and the environmental economic statistics will work with other national economic statistics to create baselines that will allow us think about change and ultimately let us separate the unintended consequences of regulations that can be avoided because they are no longer unanticipated."
Eli Fenichel
Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics
Kenneth Gillingham
Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs; Professor of Environmental & Energy Economics
More News in Brief
All Communication Is Local
As local governments increasingly address the need to build climate resiliency and adapt effective climate mitigation strategies, it is vital that they develop and implement effective communication plans. However, climate communication has not always been a priority, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC). A discussion hosted by YPCCC on April 15, 2025, explored effective communication strategies being employed by municipal communications officials around the country. The key, the officials said, is to embed communications at the beginning of an initiative and make climate mitigation efforts relevant to the daily lives of community members by connecting the initiatives to efficient and cheaper energy bills, job creation, and healthier air.
“Instead of being conceptual and abstract about decarbonization, tell a story about actual people who are making their house efficient and saving money. These kinds of stories consistently connect with people across the political spectrum and across levels of understanding and engagement on climate change,” said Julia Trezona Peek, chief strategy and partnership officer at the Urban Sustainability Directors Network.
Credit: Denver Climate Action, Sustainability & Resiliency
YSE Professors Honored with Frontiers Planet Prize
Two Yale School of Environment professors were part of research teams whose work was honored with the Frontiers Planet Prize. The annual prize celebrates breakthroughs in sustainability science, including solutions with potential to help humanity remain within the boundaries of Earth’s ecosystem.
For decades, Peter Raymond, the Oastler Professor of Biogeochemistry, fellow scientists, and residents have been sampling water from the six largest rivers in the Arctic as part of the Arctic Great Rivers Observatory (ArcticGRO). A study on their findings published in Nature Geoscience, “Recent trends in the chemistry of major northern rivers signal widespread Arctic change,” was named the “National Champion” for Canada, one of 19 National Champions from five continents.
Eli Fenichel, the Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics, was co-author of a research study, published in Science, that examined how governments are valuing ecosystems in planning processes. The paper, “Accounting for the increasing benefits from scarce ecosystems,” was named the “National Champion” for the Netherlands.
Eli Fenichel
Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics
Peter A. Raymond
Senior Associate Dean of Research & Director of Doctoral Studies; Oastler Professor of Biogeochemistry
Dorceta Taylor Awarded 2025 Bouchet Leadership Medal
In recognition of her outstanding leadership in her academic field and impact as a role model to students and environmental researchers, Dorceta Taylor, the Wangari Maathai Professor of Environmental Justice at the Yale School of the Environment, was honored with the Bouchet Leadership Medal during the Annual Yale Bouchet Conference on Graduate Education on April 5, 2025. This year’s conference focused on “Environmental Justice: The Intersection of Climate Change and Social Equity.”
Taylor ’85 MFS,’91 PhD has dedicated her research and scholarship in the environmental field to the intersection of race, class, and justice. She is the author of pioneering studies on institutional diversity and workforce dynamics and has published numerous books examining connections between racial segregation and exposure to environmental hazards.
The Bouchet medal is named for Edward Alexander Bouchet, who graduated from Yale College in 1874 and became the first African American to earn a doctorate at an American university when he received his PhD in physics from Yale in 1876.
In her keynote address, Taylor discussed Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership role at the intersection of civil rights and environmental justice, noting that he was at the forefront of addressing environmental justice issues such as equal use of space in public parks, housing, and transportation.
“He was fighting for all things, and he talks about the fierce urgency of now,” Taylor said. “…that’s exactly the kind of moment we are in now.”
Michelle Nearon, senior associate dean for graduate student development and diversity, conferred the medal.
“Professor Taylor is a stalwart figure in academia. Through her work, she has consistently shed light on important social, environmental trends. Professor Taylor's commitment to diversity and inclusion in the educational context is beyond commendable,” Nearon said.
Michelle Nearon (right), senior associate dean for graduate student development and diversity at Yale, bestows YSE Professor Dorceta Taylor with Bouchet Leadership Medal. Photo: Jonathan Olson
Dorceta Taylor
Wangari Maathai Professor of Environmental Justice