The Federal Power Regulatory Fee headquarters in Washington, D.C.
Photograph:
Alamy Inventory Photograph
Federal regulators not often backtrack, particularly as rapidly because the Federal Power Regulatory Fee. But on Thursday Democratic commissioners hit pause on a brand new coverage requiring a greenhouse-gas evaluation for pure fuel pipelines and export initiatives. Good for them.
The fee final month voted 3-2 with Republicans in dissent to revise its coverage for approving fuel pipelines and export terminals. FERC by legislation should certify that initiatives are within the public curiosity and received’t have a major environmental affect, however Democratic commissioners added greenhouse-gas emissions to their permission analyses. Their excuse was a courtroom ruling that they claimed required the change, although it actually doesn’t.
Oblique emissions from upstream manufacturing and downstream consumption may additionally should be tabulated underneath the rule, though these are unimaginable to quantify reliably. Who is aware of how way more fuel might be produced if a pipeline is constructed? Relaxation assured, progressives will declare each new pipeline massively will increase emissions.
On one level, they’re proper: Pipelines encourage extra vitality manufacturing. A dearth of U.S. pipeline capability, particularly in Appalachia, has suppressed funding in provide. Crude may be transported by rail or truck. Pure fuel can’t. The U.S. can also’t ship extra liquefied fuel to Europe with out extra pipelines and export terminals. FERC’s local weather coverage was a present to
Vladimir Putin.
His bloody warfare on Ukraine and weaponization of Russian fuel in opposition to Europe illuminate the stakes. Maybe Democratic commissioners have been mugged by vitality actuality just like the Europeans. We’re advised Democratic commissioners have been additionally surprised by the backlash in Congress, particularly from
Joe Manchin.
The West Virginia Senator blasted the commissioners from his personal get together at a listening to this month: “I imagine you all took the route from the courtroom and utilized it much more broadly than you wanted to, setting in movement a course of that may serve to additional shut down the infrastructure we desperately want as a rustic and additional politicize vitality improvement in our nation.”
Chairman
Richard Glick
on Thursday did a comfortable retreat by recasting final month’s coverage statements as “drafts” on which FERC will search public remark. “In gentle of issues that the coverage statements created additional confusion concerning the Fee’s method to the siting of pure fuel initiatives, the Fee determined it might be useful to collect further feedback from all stakeholders, together with strategies for creating larger certainty, earlier than implementing the brand new coverage statements,” he mentioned.
We’ll take the reprieve. However the higher strategy to eradicate funding uncertainty could be for FERC to rescind the proposal in toto.
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Appeared within the March 25, 2022, print version as ‘Mugged by Power Actuality.’
