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."
January 23, 2024
Eli Fenichel
Knobloch Family Professor of Natural Resource Economics
Kenneth Gillingham
Senior Associate Dean of Academic Affairs; Grinstein Class of 1954 Professor of Environmental and Energy Economics
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Sparkle Malone
Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Carbon Capture
UK Lawmakers Visit Yale to Explore Nature-Based Climate Solutions Up Close
The Yale Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability recently hosted a delegation of Members of the British Parliament as part of a four-day Connecticut visit organized by the British American Parliamentary Group. The six MPs met with Karen Seto, the Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science, to discuss climate policy, urbanization, and the role of cities in addressing climate change.
The visit included a tour of New Haven’s bioswales. Bioswales are a landscaping feature designed to slow, filter, and redirect stormwater runoff, slowly filtering it through sediment into the groundwater or allowing it to be absorbed by native plants. They help prevent flooding and reduce pollution that would otherwise flow into rivers and streams. The Urban Resources Initiative has partnered with the city to help lead the construction and management of the bioswales. Approximately 200 bioswales have been installed across downtown New Haven through this broader effort, with about 50 adjacent to Yale’s campus.
“Seeing the bioswale presented me with a simple and effective option I want to take back and suggest to my local authority. Not only would it alleviate flooding problems, but it could also be an attractive green feature that could enhance areas, " said Christine Jardine, Member of Parliament for Edinburgh West.
The visit also provided an opportunity to explore collaboration between UK policymakers, the City of New Haven, and YSE on sustainability and climate resilience initiatives.
March 27, 2026
Karen Seto
Frederick C. Hixon Professor of Geography and Urbanization Science; Director of the Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability; Co-Director of the Yale Center for Geospatial Solutions
Colleen Murphy-Dunning
Program Director, Hixon Center for Urban Sustainability, Urban Resources Initiative (URI); Lecturer in Urban and Community Forestry
YSE Doctoral Candidate Honored with ESA Policy Award
Jonathan Gewirtzman, a doctoral candidate in ecosystem ecology and biogeochemistry, has received the 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award from the Ecological Society of America. He is one of 20 students from universities across the U.S. to be honored with the award.
Recipients of the award travel to Washington, D.C. for policy, communication and career training and they meet with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
Gewirtzman, a National Science Foundation Research Fellow, investigates greenhouse gas cycling in forests and wetlands aimed at informing strategies for mitigating natural emissions and enhancing nature-based climate solutions.
“ESA has been an important community for me throughout my graduate career — a place to connect with ecologists across subfields and to build leadership experience as an officer of the Biogeosciences Section. I'm excited for the opportunity to learn firsthand from scientists and policymakers working at that interface,” Gewirtzman said.
February 19, 2026
