US declines to appeal climate ruling on pipelines

The US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) will not ask the US Supreme Court to overturn a ruling requiring it to analyze the indirect greenhouse gas emissions from natural gas pipelines.

FERC said today it was not appealing the August 2017 decision by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals that forced the agency to redo part of the environmental review associated with its approval of the 1.1 Bcf/d (31mn m³/d) Sabal Trail pipeline in Florida. The ruling marked the first time a court explicitly ordered FERC to analyze the downstream greenhouse gas emissions of approving new natural gas infrastructure.

President Donald Trump's administration earlier this year said it was considering challenging the decision. US solicitor general Noel Francisco twice requested and obtained additional time to decide whether to appeal, but the administration declined to do so by a 2 July deadline set by the court.

FERC before the appeals court ruling had only analyzed the carbon emissions from operating the $3bn Sabal Trail pipeline, but refused to evaluate the emissions from gas-fired power plants the pipeline was built to supply.

The appeals court, in a 2-1 decision, said that environmental analysis was incomplete because it was "reasonably foreseeable" that gas would be burned by power plants because it was the "entire purpose" of the project. The court threw out the pipeline approval and told the agency to conduct a new review that included a discussion of the climate impacts.

FERC issued a revised environmental review on 14 March with an estimate of the maximum greenhouse gas emissions from the pipeline. But it declined to offer a more rigorous analysis of how the project would contribute to climate change or the "social costs" of climate-related damage. Environmentalists are challenging that decision.

That type of upper-bound greenhouse gas estimate appeared to be the new status quo for federal reviews of natural gas pipelines. But FERC abruptly changed course on 18 May and adopted a new policy to only prepare downstream emissions estimates for pipelines such as Sabal Trail that are directly connected to an identifiable gas-burning facility. Most pipelines instead connect to the broad interstate pipeline system.

Sabal Trail's owner Enbridge had faced a 30 June deadline to challenge the ruling to the Supreme Court, but it also declined to file an appeal.