Utility Dive Quotes Emily Mallen on FERC and Environmental Justice

For its article “Is FERC making progress on environmental justice?,” Utility Dive quoted Akin energy regulation, markets & enforcement partner Emily Mallen. The article reports on how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) acting chairman has made environmental justice (EJ) one of his three top priorities, and on the question of how any changes in FERC’s orientation will affect its permitting decisions for natural gas pipeline infrastructure and liquefied natural gas (LNG) export projects.

Emily, whose practice includes providing strategic advice to pipeline companies appearing before FERC, noted that pipeline developers are now seeing more EJ-related data requests from FERC staff as part of the agency’s review of project proposals. She said, “There’s a lot more of an emphasis on the impact of your project to environmental justice communities…and so the [National Environmental Policy Act] document is going to be more robust in terms of discussions of environmental justice impact.”

Emily said that, at the start of the Biden-Harris administration, EJ analysis was relegated to a “small paragraph,” adding, “The agency is putting a lot of manpower [and] brainpower towards considering [environmental justice] impact in its decision making in ways it wasn’t doing before.”

She noted she would be monitoring the appeals of FERC’s Rio Grande and Texas LNG decisions to see if the court will give FERC more guidance on how it should consider EJ issues. Emily said that she thought the agency would not do much more until it has a court telling it that it is not “doing it correctly.”

Emily did say that it is unclear to what extent FERC’s focus on EJ is firmly rooted, adding that a different administration and a new set of FERC Commissioners could have a different position on the issue.