FERC won't consider big climate change effects in pipeline reviews

A divided Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said Friday it won't make broad evaluations about the impact of climate change when it decides whether to approve interstate pipelines. FERC’s three Republican commissioners issued the surprise ruling as part of an otherwise routine decision on a pipeline upgrade proposed by the utility giant Dominion. The commission approved the Dominion project, which is in western New York. The two dissenting Democrat commissioners, Richard Glick and Cheryl LaFleur, quickly released statements criticizing the ruling by the GOP majority, saying the decision changed FERC policy on how it examines greenhouse gas emissions. FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre and fellow Republicans Robert Powelson and Neil Chatterjee wrote in the majority opinion that federal law does not require the commission to consider the upstream and downstream greenhouse gas emission impact in pipeline reviews. That means it can't evaluate the effect of greenhouse gas emissions released by the products transported through pipelines and during the production process of the natural gas to be shipped. The Republican commissioners said accounting for greenhouse gas emissions outside of building and operating the pipeline structure is “extraneous” and "generic in nature and inherently speculative." They said such consideration "muddles" the environmental analysis FERC conducts under the National Environmental Policy Act...MORE