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At the beginning of this month, the EPA set a new national standard for ozone, nudging the maximum allowable concentration down from 75 to 70 parts per billion (ppb). Industry backlash to the ozone standard continues a long tradition of opposing regulation on the grounds that it is too expensive, despite almost 20 years of rebuttal that shows that estimated costs of federal regulations are overblown.

Avi Allison joins Synapse as an associate. He was previously a research assistant at the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy, where he gathered and analyzed data used to create an international Environmental Performance Index that ranks how well countries perform on high-priority environmental issues. Ariel Horowitz, PhD, joins us as a senior associate after completing her doctoral thesis on the field of energy storage at Tufts University.

Under EPA’s final Clean Power Plan, states must submit initial compliance plans or demonstrate progress toward that goal by September 2016. The Synapse Clean Power Plan Toolkit can help state agencies, public interest groups, and others zero in on cost-effective compliance plan options for any state or region affected by the rulemaking.

In a series of recent briefs on the consumer costs of low-emissions futures, Synapse demonstrates that a Clean Energy Future scenario that exceeds the emissions targets of EPA’s Clean Power Plan can also lower electricity bills nationwide. The idea that investing heavily in clean energy and energy efficiency programs will save households money may be surprising to some, but in the third and final brief in the series, released today, Synapse discusses the logic behind why this is the case and why—if it’s so appealing—states haven’t already embarked on similar trajectories.