DC Court of Appeals tells the Federal Energy Regulation Committee they aren’t rubber stamping a new pipeline and they must include their research to include greenhouse gas emission impact of power plants on natural gas pipeline – PB/TK
Court hands pipeline opponents a major victory – By Samantha Page / Aug 22 2017
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a decision Tuesday that forces the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to reconsider the environmental impacts of the Sabal Trail pipeline and two related pipeline projects that run from Alabama to Florida.
In a case brought by the Sierra Club and two local environmental groups, a panel of three judges ruled that FERC had failed in its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) to adequately consider the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that will be served by the natural gas pipeline.
“We conclude that the EIS for the Southeast Market Pipelines Project should have either given a quantitative estimate of the downstream greenhouse emissions that will result from burning the natural gas that the pipelines will transport or explained more specifically why it could not have done so,” Judges Judith Rogers and Thomas Griffith wrote. “As we have noted greenhouse-gas emissions are an indirect effect of authorizing this project, which FERC could reasonably foresee, and which the agency has legal authority to mitigate.” A third judge, Janice Rogers Brown, dissented.
The Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity for the project, which authorized its construction, has been vacated and remanded to FERC while the agency reviews the EIS in light of the decision.
Continue to thinkprogress.org article: https://thinkprogress.org/pipeline-opponents-climate-impacts-ferc-win-b8f3573e60bf/
