Energy regulator moving backward on climate change, say Democrats

Bloomberg

Just weeks after the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission launched a sweeping review of its natural gas pipeline policy, its members are again split on the extent to which they should take climate change into account.
In the latest clash, the commission’s Republican members voted to dismiss an environmental group’s challenge to Dominion Energy Inc.’s New Market gas pipeline in upstate New York, ruling that the modest project didn’t warrant an analysis of upstream or downstream greenhouse emissions.
The agency’s two Democrats, Cheryl LaFleur and Richard Glick, characterized the dismissal as a de-facto policy change that limits how the commission factors in the impact of climate change.
“I find it particularly disappointing that the Commission is adopting this new policy just as it embarks on a broad review of the Commission’s process for certificating new natural gas pipelines, which will include how greenhouse gas emissions are assessed,” Glick wrote in his dissent.