New Political Appointee Rolls Back EPA Greenhouse Gas Guidance for FERC

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- E&E News is reporting today that the EPA’s new associate administrator for the Office of Policy, Brittany Bolen, sent a letter to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), rolling back suggestions from EPA on how FERC might evaluate the environmental impacts of fracked gas pipelines. Bolen’s letter was filed Wednesday, the day FERC’s comment period ended for the review of their 1999 policy statement pertaining to pipeline reviews. Bolen’s declaration is another example of Trump Administration political appointees ignoring widely-accepted science-based tools to better evaluate environmental and climate impacts of proposed projects.

Bolen’s letter eroded EPA’s previous comments, which, according to E&E, were “tools that FERC could use to evaluate upstream and downstream emissions from new pipelines, including EPA's greenhouse gas inventory, greenhouse gas reporting program and the ‘social cost of carbon’ method.”

In response, Sierra Club Beyond Dirty Fuels Campaign Senior Campaign Representative Joan Walker released the following statement:

"Again, the Trump Administration is burying its head in the sand on climate and putting partisan politics over the American people’s health and safety. FERC should be using every tool at its disposal to protect our air, water, climate, and communities from the effects of fracked gas pipelines, but the EPA’s political appointees show it’s still business as usual to put polluters’ profits over people’s health.”