A railroad company and a coalition of seven Utah counties filed a petition for writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court seeking review of the D.C. Circuit’s August 2023 opinion finding numerous NEPA violations in the Surface Transportation Board’s review of a rail line in Utah that would be used to transport waxy crude oil. The petition presented the question of whether NEPA “requires an agency to study environmental impacts beyond the proximate effects of the action over which the agency has regulatory authority.” The petitioners identified a circuit court split on this issue, with five circuits reading the Court’s 2004 decision in Department of Transportation v. Public Citizen to mean “that an agency’s environmental review can stop where its regulatory authority stops,” while two circuits require agencies to review “any impact that can be called reasonably foreseeable.”

Challenge to a Surface Transportation Board decision approving construction and operation of an 85-mile rail line in Utah.

Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County

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Supreme Court Review of NEPA Reviews’ Scope Sought in Utah Rail Line Case

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Justice is the ethical and political framework that addresses fairness, including issues of responsibility, rights, and structural inequity.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives

Codes and standards are regulatory instruments that specify minimum standards to protect health and safety. This ranges from performance standards, which prescribe outcomes while allowing flexibility to achieve compliance, to the more prescriptive approach of technology-specific standards.

Zoning and spatial planning are both methods for guiding the distribution of people and activities in a space, and are regulatory restriction.

A ban is a legal action that prevents the sale or supply of a product or service, or that recalls a product from the market. Examples are bans on SF6, greenwashing, fossil fuel advertisement or single-use plastics.

Either money or something of monetary value is transferred between two or more organisations, people or countries.

Conditions that enhance the feasibility of adaptation options. Enabling conditions include finance, technological innovation, strengthening policy instruments, institutional capacity, multi-level governance and changes in human behaviour and lifestyles.

Actions to reduce emissions in energy generation and supply.

Electricity generation from devices driven by the movement of salt water, differences in saltwater temperatures, or salinity gradients.

Oil is a combustible liquid fossil fuel composed mainly of hydrocarbons, occurring as crude oil and refined into petroleum products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene.

Fossil gas, commonly known as natural gas, is a fossil fuel consisting chiefly of methane with smaller amounts of other hydrocarbons and trace gases, found in underground deposits.

Coal is a combustible sedimentary rock formed from carbonised plant matter, rich in carbon and hydrocarbons, and occurring in several main types including hard coal and brown coal.

People with different national or cultural traditions from the dominant population

Social and cultural groups that share collective ancestral ties to the lands and natural resources where they live, occupy or from which they have been displaced

Activities of industries that extract natural resources, such as mining, oil, and gas, for commercial use.

Activities that involve planning, designing and building infrastructure, residential, and commercial structures.

This sector involves activities to move goods and people, alongside the storage of products.

Any substance with chemical properties that can cause physical harm to people or damage the environment, including ammonia, carbon monoxide, phosphine, chlorine, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, pesticides, dioxins, microplastics, benzene, asbestos, aflatoxins, fluoride, methanol, and toxins from marine sources.

Supreme Court Review of NEPA Reviews’ Scope Sought in Utah Rail Line Case

Policy instrument

Risk

Impacted group

Renewable energy

Fossil fuel

Economic sector

Adaptation/resilience

Finance