Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris halted a slew of coal leases in the so-called Powder River Basin (PRB) district of southern Montana and north-central Wyoming. See Western Org. of Resource Councils v. U.S. Bureau of Land Management, 2018 WL 1456624 (D. Mont.2018). PRB coal, for those in the know, is synonymous with […]
Read moreThe D.C. Circuit Confirms: FERC Shouldn’t Just Ignore Downstream Emissions in its NEPA Documents
Jamison Colburn climate change, FERC, fracking, pipelines FERC, fracking, GHGs, NEPA, Southeast Market pipelines
The big word from the D.C. Circuit just out yesterday in Sierra Club v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, 2017 WL 3597014 (D.C. Cir. 2017), is this: “downstream” emissions in pipeline approvals—the emissions that will or may occur as a result of the pipeline’s operation—cannot just be categorically excluded from Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) NEPA […]
Read moreThe National Flood Insurance Program: Time to Weigh Some Alternatives?
Jamison Colburn climate change, FEMA, risk governance FEMA, national flood insurance program, NEPA, risk
When the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) announced in 2012 that it was beginning a scoping process on a “programmatic” environmental impact statement (EIS) for the national flood insurance program, heads didn’t exactly bob up and down in nervous excitement. Indeed, that announcement seemed to coincide with a congressional probe and threats on Capitol Hill […]
Read moreWhen a President Rescinds a Memo
Among the provisions of President Trump’s executive order on climate change was this: Section 3(c) The Council on Environmental Quality shall rescind its final guidance entitled “Final Guidance for Federal for Federal Departments and Agencies on Consideration of Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Effects of Climate Change in National Environmental Policy Act Reviews . . […]
Read moreSocial Cost of Carbon: Friend to Federal Energy Projects?
Jamison Colburn BLM, climate change, coal, oil BLM, Forest Service, mineral leasing act, risk, social cost of carbon
In a starchy article in The Electricity Journal earlier this year, researchers from the University of Wyoming argued that “parties should be prepared to offer substantive comments on the suitability and accuracy of quantitative analyses of the impacts associated with greenhouse gas emissions” from energy development projects on federal land as a result of the […]
Read moreBias v. NEPA: What if Informational Tools are Futile?
As we’ve written up at the Lab before, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) plays an absolutely vital role in permitting and governing the nation’s energy infrastructure. And that vests it with a leading role in the nation’s fossil fuel future. This has not been lost on the environmental groups that keep challenging FERC’s decisions […]
Read moreCanada Looking to Fix 2012 ‘Fixes’ to Its Own NEPA
This fall, the Trudeau government will be winding down a review of Canada’s version of NEPA with a nationwide listening tour. Their study of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act (CEAA) comes in the wake of considerable (and controversial) amendments by the Harper government in 2012. Since those amendments, only about a dozen environmental assessments have been performed […]
Read moreA Guide that Doesn’t Guide?
Jamison Colburn CEQ Watch, climate change CEQ, climate change, greenhouse gas emissions, NEPA, risk 1
The final Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) guidance on “the consideration of greenhouse gas emissions and climate change in [NEPA] reviews” was signed August 1. Although it omitted some of the more troubling points raised by the December 2014 draft (good), the document—styled as a memorandum to agency heads—is disappointingly passive on a vast and […]
Read moreBREAKING: CEQ Releases Final GHG Guidance
The final amended guidance can be found here. We will be posting a full analysis later this week. For now it suffices to point out that the amended final has dropped all mention of a 25,000 metric ton threshold for treating GHG emissions in NEPA documents. It has also shifted much of the guidance’s content […]
Read more*Good* News for Cape Wind? NEPA Compliance Comes in Steps
Jamison Colburn BOEM, climate change, judicial relief, offshore wind cape wind, climate change, NEPA, risk
Cape Wind—America’s poster child for NIMBY litigation run amok—just emerged from a D.C. Circuit panel’s review with a telling result. Fast on the heels of a Ninth Circuit holding setting aside a proposed windfarm’s NEPA document for insufficient data, the D.C. Circuit announced on Tuesday that it was setting aside the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) […]
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