Above Photo: Backbone Campaign/ Flickr
Response of Beyond Extreme Energy to the statement of the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) that the agency will review its approval process for interstate gas pipelines.
If FERC were an agency which truly put the public interest first, the announced plan to review their process for approving pipelines would be a welcome development. But facts don’t lie: over the past 30 years FERC has granted permits for all but two proposed interstate gas pipelines. It is a rubber stamp agency, and it has been this through both Democratic and Republican administrations.
This announced plan comes on the heels of FERC’s efforts in New York to override the rights of states to make decisions on air and water permits for proposed pipelines. It comes as FERC considers Rick Perry’s order that they change regulatory rules and increase costs to consumers so that coal and nuclear power are given special privileges in the supposedly fuel source neutral, FERC-regulated market.
The “need” as far as new gas pipelines is to stop building them and get serious about the urgently-needed shift to renewables. But all signs indicate FERC is going from bad to worse. Instead of moving forward into the 21st century world of wind, solar and other renewables, the Trump-appointed FERC leaders want things to go backwards to the fossil fuel-dominated 20th century. We don’t trust them.