Commissioner Richard Glick Statement
December 17, 2020
Docket No. CP19-118-000
Order: C-3
I dissent from today’s order because it violates both the Natural Gas Act[1] (NGA) and the National Environmental Policy Act[2] (NEPA). In particular, the Commission is again refusing to consider the consequences its actions have for climate change. Neither the NGA nor NEPA permit the Commission to assume away the impact that constructing and operating this liquefied natural gas (LNG) facility will have on climate change. Yet that is precisely what the Commission is doing today.
In today’s order authorizing Trans-Foreland Pipeline Company LLC’s LNG import terminal (Kenai LNG Cool Down Project or Project) pursuant to section 3 of the NGA, the Commission continues to treat climate change differently than all other environmental impacts. The Commission steadfastly refuses to assess whether the impact of the Project’s GHG emissions on climate change is significant, even though it quantifies the GHG emissions directly caused by the Project.[3] That failure forms an integral part of the Commission’s decisionmaking: The refusal to assess the significance of the Project’s contribution to the harm caused by climate change is what allows the Commission to state that approval of the Project will not “significantly affect[] the quality of the human environment.”[4] Claiming that a project has no significant environmental impacts while at the same time refusing to assess the significance of the project’s impact on the most important environmental issue of our time is not reasoned decisionmaking.
That failure to meaningfully consider climate change leaves me no choice but to dissent. No matter what I might otherwise think of the Kenai LNG Cool Down Project, I will not join an order that functionally excludes climate change from the Commission’s public interest analysis. So long as the Commission continues to preclude climate change from playing a meaningful role in that analysis, it will continue to sow what I believe to be unnecessary discord in its NGA certificate proceedings.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.