Judge Criticizes FERC Environmental Review in Out-of-State Pipeline Case

The ruling on the Southeast Market Pipelines Project is the second federal court decision this month to conclude climate impacts must be taken into account.

A U.S. Court of Appeals judge ruled Tuesday that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) did an inadequate job evaluating the environmental effects of an unrelated natural-gas pipeline project a few hundred miles south of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline's projected route.

FERC's environmental impact statement "did not contain enough information on the greenhouse-gas emissions that will result from burning the gas that the pipelines will carry," wrote Judge Thomas Griffith, of the District of Columbia Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, in the court's opinion on the case between FERC and the Sierra Club.

The case concerns the Southeast Market Pipelines project, which is made up of three natural-gas pipelines now under construction in Alabama, Georgia, and Florida.

Griffith added that, "in all other respects, we conclude that FERC acted properly," but because FERC didn't adequately address the question of greenhouse-gas emissions, the court ordered the agency to prepare an environmental impact statement "that is consistent with this opinion."

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