The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit rejected a challenge to FERC’s approval of the Driftwood Pipeline project Friday, finding that the commission appropriately assessed the project’s environmental impacts.
The decision upholding the certificate for the $1.28 billion project that includes two new pipelines stretching a total of nearly 70 miles found that FERC was in full compliance with requirements under the National Environmental Policy Act — including in its assessment of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Then-FERC Chair Willie Phillips and current FERC Chair Mark Christie previously highlighted the Driftwood licensing process as the gold standard of compromise at the commission, which has long struggled to reach consensus over how the agency should consider the greenhouse gas impacts of new fossil fuel infrastructure.
In the Driftwood decision, FERC required an estimate of the social cost of carbon — though it clarified that calculation does not necessarily allow the agency to reject a project based on the impact of those emissions on climate change.
