The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently released an Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Adelphia Gateway Project. FERC quantifies nearly 90,000 tons per year of direct carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions, but offers no meaningful analysis of the pipeline’s climate impacts. We submitted joint comments urging FERC to better weigh the significance of project’s impacts using the social cost of greenhouse gases methodology.
Based on forecasted emissions and monetized estimates, the project’s direct pollution will cause at least $4.6 million per year in climate damages. FERC’s analysis fails to provide any monetized estimate or discuss real-world impacts. The agency also declines to quantify the downstream emissions from natural gas combustion, despite acknowledging that the project will result in such emissions. Our comments ask FERC to assess the climate impacts of the project’s direct, upstream, and downstream emissions. The social cost of greenhouse gases is the best available tool for meaningfully weighing the significance of these impacts.