It might be getting harder to win approval for new fossil fuel projects without first examining their impacts on climate change. Last week, regulators in New York rejected key permits for a natural gas pipeline, saying a previous federal approval had failed to consider the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.
The pipeline in question, the 7.8 mile-long Valley Lateral Project, would supply a 680 megawatt power plant that's currently under construction. The pipeline had already received approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), but because it crosses several streams and wetlands, it needed state regulators to sign off, too.
In a letter to FERC on Aug. 30, Thomas Berkman, deputy commissioner and general counsel at the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, wrote that federal regulators had "failed to consider or quantify the indirect effects" of the emissions produced when the fuel shipped through the pipeline is eventually burned.
