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Environmentalists criticize extra FERC review for Sabal Trail

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Environmentalists criticize extra FERC review for Sabal Trail

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's effort to get the Sabal Trail pipeline and the greater Southeast Market Pipelines project back on track with a supplemental environmental report faced substantial pushback from environmental groups in comments filed with the commission.

Pipeline companies sponsoring the project, by contrast, said FERC had satisfied the requirements of a recent court order that put certificate approval of the project in question.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in August vacated and remanded FERC's approval orders for the projects that make up Southeast Market Pipelines: the 1.1 Bcf/d, 515-mile Sabal Trail Transmission LLC project led by Enbridge Inc., Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Co. LLC's Hillabee expansion and NextEra Energy Inc.'s Florida Southeast Connection. It found the agency provided too little information about greenhouse gas emissions associated with downstream power plants that the pipelines would feed.

Comments on FERC's draft supplemental environmental impact statement that was issued in response to the court ruling were due Nov. 20. They arrived as the pipeline companies wait for the appeals court to decide whether to stick with its decision to vacate the FERC orders, a step the commission and the pipeline companies oppose as overly disruptive, or to simply remand them to the agency to correct its environmental report.

FERC on Sept. 27 published the draft supplement that added calculations of downstream emissions. It estimated a net increase in downstream permitted emissions of 8.38 million mt/year of carbon dioxide equivalent and provided an upper bound estimate that downstream use of the gas would raise Florida's greenhouse gas inventory by between 3.7% and 9.7%. (FERC dockets CP14-554, CP15-16, CP15-17)

'Nothing further is required': Sabal Trail

Sabal Trail Transmission, in its comments at FERC, said the commission's draft had offered a quantitative estimate and explained how downstream emissions are offset by the conversion of plants from coal to natural gas. "Nothing further is required," it argued.

If anything, it argued, FERC overstated the relative magnitude of greenhouse gas emissions. Duke Energy Florida LLC also said FERC met the court's tasks by comparing emissions to state and national greenhouse gas inventories and by listing its reasons for declining to use the social cost of carbon tool in its analysis.

But the Sierra Club slammed FERC's draft approach as a skeletal analysis and a rushed attempt to assuage the court. It argued that the draft understated the volume of emissions and failed to back up assertions about new gas-fired generation replacing coal or oil-fired plants. Moreover, the group argued that FERC failed to satisfy the court's requirement that it meaningfully discuss the significance of the emissions.

No explanation on 'significance': Sierra Club

"Burning the gas delivered by this pipeline will emit carbon dioxide equivalent to 9.7% of Florida's total greenhouse gas emissions," said Sierra Club staff attorney Elly Benson in a statement. "This is a startlingly large number for a single project. FERC's casual dismissal of the Sabal Trail pipeline's climate impacts is completely at odds with common sense or accepted science."

Other groups weighing in included the New York School of Law Institute for Policy Integrity, which said FERC needed to do more to analyze the projects' impacts on gas supply and prices. "If the increased consumption of natural gas due to the increased supply from the Southeast Market Pipelines project comes at the expense of energy conservation or of cleaner energy sources like nuclear and renewables, the end result would be an increase in greenhouse gas emissions," the group contended.

In joint comments with the Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club and Union of Concerned Scientists, the organization also challenged FERC's decision not to apply a social cost of greenhouse gases to quantify impacts of the projects. "The agency's refusal is arbitrary and unlawful in light of a growing body of case law holding that failure to monetize a project's costs is impermissible if the agency relies on the project's monetized benefits to justify its action," they wrote.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, for its part, registered a "lack of objections" to the FERC approach. While under the Obama administration the EPA had pushed FERC to perform a more detailed greenhouse gas and climate impact evaluation, the current EPA said "FERC has included the evaluation of GHG emissions analysis" in the draft report.

As the sponsors wait for the D.C. Circuit to decide between the arguments to remand or vacate the FERC orders, the Sabal Trail pipeline continued to have no flows this week for an eighth straight day, the longest period of nonflow since the pipeline started up in June, data compiled by Platts Analytics' Bentek Energy show.

Maya Weber is a reporter for S&P Global Platts, which, like S&P Global Market Intelligence, is owned by S&P Global Inc.