In re Mountain Valley Pipeline, LLC

A divided Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) denied rehearing of its order authorizing construction and operation of the Mountain Valley Pipeline Project in West Virginia and Virginia and a related project that would connect to Pennsylvania. Among the arguments rejected by the majority of FERC commissioners were that FERC should have evaluated whether energy demands could be met with “non-transportation alternatives” such as energy conservation or renewable energy resources, that FERC failed to adequately analyze the climate change impacts of the end use of natural gas transported by the project, and that FERC’s consideration of climate change in the context of evaluating the public interest under Section 7 of the Natural Gas Act (NGA) was inadequate. The FERC majority said greenhouse gas emissions from the downstream use of natural gas did not fall within the definition of indirect impacts or cumulative impacts, and also concluded that the Social Cost of Carbon tool could not meaningfully inform decisions on natural gas transportation infrastructure projects under the NGA. FERC said it continued to believe the Social Cost of Carbon tool was “more appropriately used by regulators whose responsibilities are tied more directly to fossil fuel production or consumption.” Two commissioners wrote dissents, both of which were critical of FERC’s decisions to restrict its consideration of projects’ impacts on climate change.