In the News

A coalition of the Environmental Defense Fund, Food & Water Watch, the Institute for Policy Integrity at NYU School of Law, and others was among the groups that commented on FERC's gas pipeline certificate policy. Their comments suggested that FERC use the social cost of greenhouse gases as the best approach to assessing impacts of a proposed project's emissions.

FERC has yet to act on the 92.5-mile, 250 MMcf/d North Bakken Expansion Project, which would provide incremental firm capacity from six gas processing plants to a proposed interconnect with Northern Border Pipeline Company. Adding a possible hurdle in that docket, the Institute for Policy Integrity has faulted FERC's environmental assessment for a failure to project indirect GHG emissions or monetize emissions.

FERC almost never denies (pipeline) applications. As long as there’s a contract in place they approve it,” said Max Sarinsky, an attorney with New York University’s Institute for Public Policy. “They have an obligation to review the impacts of these pipelines, both beneficial and adverse, and that’s not something they’ve been doing with climate impacts.

Emission reductions from a permanent leasing ban would be relatively small. But environmentalists and others who want more aggressive action against climate change say a ban would nudge the economy in a new direction. “The federal government is a huge player here. The government has market power,” said attorney Max Sarinsky with New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “If you restrict the supply (of oil and gas), you alter the market and you create a better environment for more sustainable fuels.”

The Western Energy Alliance, a trade group representing fossil fuel companies operating on federal lands, filed a lawsuit against Biden’s order on Wednesday, saying it was an overreach. But Jayni Foley Hein, natural resources director for the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, countered that the order is legally sound and was “written very carefully to avoid legal risk.” “It smartly pauses all new leasing, which Interior can do pursuant to multiple laws, and leaves the door open to more permanent curtailment in the future,” she said.

Increasing fossil fuel development on public lands comes with serious downsides, according to New York University law professor, Jayni Foley Hein. In an article published in 2018, she argues that the prices private developers pay to extract fossil fuels from public lands do not reflect the external harms of fossil fuel production, such as greenhouse gas emissions.

In a December 14 amicus brief submitted in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit case, State of California, et al., v Andrew Wheeler, IPI says EPA’s failure to account for the “environmental cost” of foregone emissions reductions for methane and volatile organic compounds results in a deeply flawed cost-benefit analysis supporting its September 14 rule.

A rational administration would look at the decline in demand for oil and gas leases and see it as an opportunity to hit pause and come up with a fiscally and environmentally smarter way to manage public lands. Instead, the Trump administration is rushing ahead with these lease sales, locking in more harmful greenhouse gas emissions while failing to earn a decent return for American taxpayers.

Other items on FERC's agenda: a rehearing request regarding FERC's approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline Southgate expansion permit; a rehearing request from Sierra Club on a Sabal Trail compression station permit; and a permit decision on a pipeline expansion that would feed the Sabine Pass LNG plant. That one includes a challenge from the Institute for Policy Integrity, which wants to know why the commission did not include downstream greenhouse gas impacts of the pipelines.

A coalition of South Texas community groups and environmental organiztions has challenged U.S. federal regulators' decision last month to approve a scaled-down Rio Grande LNG facility. The suit filed in June has attracted interest from outside groups, with New York University's Institute for Policy Integrity submitting an amicus brief.