A partisan split has revealed itself at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over, predictably, the commission’s role in analyzing the environmental impacts of natural gas pipelines.
At the March 15 open FERC meeting, the commission’s two Democrats – Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick – issued combined partial dissents in a case involving the Birdsboro pipeline in Berks County, Pa. (DTE Midstream Appalachia, LLC, 162 FERC ¶ 61,238), and a West Virginia hydro license. In those cases, LaFleur and Glick said they ultimately agreed with the FERC decision but had serious problems with the reasoning of the majority, the three Republican members, Chairman Kevin McIntyre, and commissioners Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson.
In the Birdsboro case, Glick and LaFleur objected to the majority’s failure “to use the Social Cost of Carbon to considering the significance of the project’s environmental impacts.” The commission issued an order the night before the open meeting, giving the 915-mile Sabal Trail pipeline in the Southeast a green light, after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals had rejected FERC’s earlier approval of the project. The court found FERC’s environmental analysis of downstream greenhouse gas emissions from the pipeline inadequate and sent it back to the commission.
In its approval of the project after the court remand (Florida Southeast Connection, LLC, 162 FERC ¶ 61,233) ), FERC did not use the controversial social cost of carbon calculation in its environmental analysis. Lafleur and Glick dissented in the Sabal Trail order.
In the DTE Midstream case, the two commission Democrats said, “Consistent with the views expressed in our respective dissents to Sabal Trail, we disagree with the Commission’s conclusion that the Social Cost of Carbon is not an appropriate and meaningful tool for estimating a specific project’s impacts or informing the Commission’s analysis of the Project.”
In both the DTE case and the West Virginia hydro license, LaFleur and Glick said the majority was shortchanging the opportunity for project opponents to raise concerns with FERC’s actions. “In a recent order, Tennessee Gas Pipeline Co., L.L.C.,” they wrote, “the Commission indicated a renewed adherence to our regulations regarding late intervention, but the Commission’s statement that we will be ‘less lenient in the grant of late interventions’ left room for intervenors to show good cause. However, today’s [DTE]order suggests that good cause for late intervention does not exist where an entity seeking to participate as a party in the proceeding submits a motion on the same day it learned that the application had been submitted.”
They added, “While we agree that late interventions should be limited to parties that demonstrate good cause, we are concerned by the potential consequences of the Commission’s pronouncement, particularly as it would apply to landowners and community organizations that lack sufficient resources to keep up with every docket. As we highlighted in our separate statements on Sabal Trail, we are concerned about public confidence in the Commission’s pipeline siting process and increased efforts to limit interventions can only accelerate this trend.”
FERC approval of new natural gas pipelines was once a backwater of the commission’s activities. But in recent years, as natural gas has supplanted coal as the major generator of electricity and major new pipelines have become needed to move gas to its markets – including export markets – the environmental impacts of pipelines have become a flashpoint.
FERC meetings have become occasions for staged protests by pipeline opponents, including spreading to the commissioners’ homes. At its December open meeting, the commission said it would conduct a review its controversial process for granting approval of natural gas pipelines. In the LaFleur-Glick partial dissent, the two Democrats wrote, “We are hopeful that the recently announced generic proceeding on pipeline review will allow the Commission and its stakeholders to consider these issues in a meaningful and comprehensive way.”
The commissioners in the majority on the actions LaFleur and Glick opposed had nothing to say.
— Kennedy Maize