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Comments to FERC on Putnam Expansion Project
The Putnam Expansion Project involves the construction and installation of natural gas infrastructure that will result in downstream emissions of approximately 3.26 million metric tons carbon dioxide-equivalent each year. Our comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) focus on its environmental assessment of the project, which provides unclear and inadequate analysis of the emissions and their climate impacts. We urge FERC to monetize climate damages by using social cost of greenhouse gas metrics.
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Comments on Wyoming Lease Sale
The Bureau of Land Management failed to estimate the climate impacts of leasing activity that would produce over 5 million tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent in downstream emissions on an annual basis. We submitted comments urging the agency to use the social cost of greenhouse gases in its environmental assessment.
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Comments to EPA on Methane Emissions from Oil and Gas Operations
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed revisions to New Source Performance Standards for methane and volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions from the oil and natural gas sector. We submitted comments focusing on EPA’s flawed legal and economic justifications for the rule.
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Comments to the State Department on the Proposed Keystone XL Pipeline
We submitted comments on the U.S. Department of State’s supplemental environmental impact statement for the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project. A federal district court ruled that the agency’s original impact analysis was inadequate, failing to take all relevant information into account when projecting that the pipeline would not affect total crude oil production. The Department’s new analysis projects that the pipeline will likely increase total crude oil production by only partially offsetting production that would have occurred elsewhere under a “no action” scenario, but irrationally fails to account for this substitution effect when projecting the pipeline’s economic benefits. Our comments argue that the Department continues to violate NEPA by its lopsided treatment of the pipeline’s costs and benefits, through not only its inconsistent treatment of substitution effects but also its failure to assess the pipeline’s climate-related impacts through monetization.
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Testimony on Retirement of the San Juan Coal-Fired Power Plant
Jason Schwartz and Denise Grab prepared a testimony for the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission regarding a proposal to retire the San Juan Generating Units, a coal-fired power plant in New Mexico. Their testimony details how applying Social Cost of Carbon metrics would allow the Commission to better monetize and contextualize the climate impacts of the proposal. Retiring the San Juan coal units would deliver billions of dollars in benefits to agricultural productivity, property values, and human health.
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Comments on Alaska LNG Project
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's environmental assessment of the Alaska LNG project failed to provide a meaningful analysis of the pipeline project's climate effects. We submitted joint comments encouraging FERC to monetize the social cost of greenhouse gases in its Environmental Impact Statement.
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Comments to FERC on Jordan Cove Natural Gas Project
We submitted joint comments to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) on its environmental assessment of the Jordan Cove natural gas exports project in Oregon. FERC failed to provide a meaningful analysis of the pipeline’s climate effects.
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Comments to the Army Corps of Engineers on the Pebble Mine Project
We submitted joint comments on the Army Corps of Engineers’ environmental assessment of the Pebble Mine Project in southwest Alaska. The Corps quantifies greenhouse gas emissions from the project but fails to provide a monetized estimate of the climate damages those emissions will produce.
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Comments on Caballo West Federal Coal Lease
The Office of Surface Mining and Reclamation Enforcement (OSM) issued its environmental assessment of extending the Caballo Mine West Tract federal coal lease. The mining plan would extend the life of the mine by approximately nine years, from 2042-2051, and increase the amount of coal mined from an average of 10.1 million tons per year to approximately 13.5 tons per year. Despite quantifying over 23 million tons of yearly carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, OSM does not include a monetized estimate of the climate damages those emissions will produce. We submitted joint comments asking that OSM use the social cost of greenhouse gases to better weigh the real-world impacts of potential coal leasing.
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Environmental Law and Policy, 4th Ed.
This casebook emphasizes environmental policy, as well as the structure and details of the federal environmental statutes. It focuses students’ attention on how tradeoffs between environmental goals and social goals are resolved in different and difficult contexts. The book has been updated to reflect new developments in the law of natural resource management, water pollution, and climate change.
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