The concept of environmental justice could play as big a part as climate change as a U.S. appeals court reviews FERC's approval of the 1.1-Bcf/d Sabal Trail pipeline and other components of the Southeast Market Pipelines natural gas transportation project.

Federal appeals courts have tended to uphold FERC in its analysis of greenhouse gas emissions during reviews of natural gas infrastructure. The commission tailors its analysis to the effects of the individual project, rather than expanding it to upstream and downstream effects in the gas production and consumption life cycle as environmental groups would like. In addition to the courts' deference, President Donald Trump came to office since the challenge to the Southeast Market Pipelines project was filed in the D.C. Circuit in September 2016, and he dropped White House guidance on climate that the environmental groups opposing Southeast Market Pipelines had partially relied on in making their claims.

But at an April 18 hearing of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the judges seemed interested in the groups' claims that FERC had what the U.S. EPA described as "environmental justice communities." Elizabeth Benson, a staff attorney for Sierra Club, argued on behalf of her organization, Flint Riverkeeper and Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. In their lawsuit, the groups argued that FERC had not adequately evaluated project impacts to the climate or to low-income and minority communities that tend to be more vulnerable to the hazards of industrial development.

The Southeast Market Pipelines projects are far into their construction phase in Alabama, Georgia and Florida.

At the hearing, according to S&P Global Platts Gas Daily, FERC attorney Ross Fulton said the commission considered alternative routes for Sabal Trail, including a path along the Gulf of Mexico, but decided the current route was the best.

Platts reported that the attorney for Sabal Trail Transmission acknowledged that Florida would be a primary user of the pipeline gas and admitted that concerns have been raised in rural communities about the pipeline's effect on air quality. But the attorney, Jeremy Marwell, said the benefits of the project outweigh the impacts.

In an April 19 interview, Benson said she told the judges that FERC had failed to take a hard look at the impacts of the 516-mile Sabal Trail pipeline, the largest piece of the Southeast Market Pipelines project, on environmental justice communities. The Sierra Club and the other groups are especially concerned about the effect of compressor stations, which Benson said release "hundreds of thousands of tons of air pollutants each year."

One of the stations is in Albany, Ga. "FERC refuses to acknowledge that it is an environmental justice community," Benson said, "even though the Sierra Club and the other environmental petitioners have shown that the neighborhood around that compressor station is over 80% African-American."

Benson said almost 84% of the pipeline runs through environmental justice communities, a description that seemed to draw the judges' attention at the hearing. "FERC nonetheless claims those communities are not disproportionately impacted by the pipeline," she said.

Benson did not step away from the groups' claims of an inadequate FERC review on climate impacts. "I think the judges indicated, at least a few of them, that FERC's excuses for refusing to do a greenhouse gas analysis are just that: excuses," Benson said. "It has the tools to do that analysis, and even the judges are a bit mystified why it refuses to do so."

Benson explained to the court that FERC uses "Census tract data," which covers a broader geographical area compared to the more granular "Census block data," a group of 600 to 3,000 people, the smallest geographical unit for which the U.S. Census Bureau publishes sample data. Benson told the judges that using tract data can hide pockets of minorities living close to compressor stations and other gas infrastructure.

FERC does not comment on court cases. In defending its climate analysis in other situations, the commission has said considering emissions from things like gas-fired power plants as part of its review of pipelines, as the Sierra Club wants it to do with Southeast Market Pipelines, would be "speculative," and calculating one project's effect on the world's climate would be beyond its capabilities.

A spokesperson for the Sabal Trail project said the developer does not comment on ongoing cases. (U.S. Appeals Court for the D.C. Circuit No. 16-1329)

In a Feb. 2, 2016, order, FERC issued the authorizations for Sabal Trail Transmission LLC's pipeline project, Williams Partners LP's Hillabee expansion project on the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC system and NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Southeast Connection project at the southern end of the Sabal Trail pipeline in Florida. Sabal Trail Transmission is a joint venture of Spectra Energy Partners LP, now part of Enbridge Inc.; Duke Energy Corp.; and NextEra Energy. The Sabal Trail pipeline's foundation shippers are Florida Power & Light Co. and Duke Energy Florida LLC.

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