Update 2018-02-08: FERC cry of wolf delays mandate from DC Circuit Court
Instead of answering Sabal Trail’s
Friday cry of wolf by issuing new certificates yesterday,
FERC instead took that cry to the DC Circuit Court,
asking for a delay of today’s issue of a mandate.
FERC did not issue new certificates yesterday,
and the Court did not issue a mandate today.
Of course, today was merely the first day the Court
could have issued a mandate, so we’ll see.
Don’t listen to FERC and Sabal Trail’s cries of wolf, Court!
What’s really eating their pipelines is solar and wind power
taking over the market.
For
the fourth year running, renewable energy has produced more
new U.S. energy than natural gas,
according to
FERC’s own
Office of Energy Projects Energy Infrastructure Update For December 2017.
Four years means ever since the Sabal Trail pipeline was first announced in 2013.
Those are the wolves after those poor pipeline Applicants: solar and wind power.
Gavin Bade, Utility Dive, Feb. 6, 2018,
FERC asks DC Circuit to delay issuing order to halt Sabal Trail pipeline, Continue reading 2018-01-07 2018-02-07.
The illustration
by Francis Barlow Aesop’s fable “The Boy who Cried Wolf”, called by him DE PASTORIS PUERO ET AGRICOLIS, 1687
Tag Archives: solar
FERC cries wolf for Sabal Trail to DC Circuit Court
WWALS Motion for FERC to reject Sabal Trail et al. request for reissued or emergency certificates 2018-02-05
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hahira, GA, February 5, 2018 — Suwannee Riverkeeper objects to Sabal Trail’s last-minute Request to make an end run around an impending mandate from the D.C. Circuit Court that could shut that pipeline down. Granting the Applicants’ Request for reissued or emergency certificates would amount to the same kind of “multi-billion dollar bailout” that FERC recently rejected for the failing coal and nuclear industries, this time targeted at the natural gas industry. The Applicants for that Request claim need for the pipeline, yet they cite themselves for evidence, in a massive conflict of interest, with internal contradictions, and replete with conflicts with other sources deriving from some of those same Applicants.
If, as U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson recently said in Warsaw, Poland, the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built by Russian gas giant Gazprom PJSC is “undermining Europe’s overall energy stability and security,” and Europe should seek to diversify energy supplies, the same applies to the Sabal Trail natural gas pipeline Canadian gas giant Enbridge is now seven months late building through the U.S. Southeast. The Sunshine State already gets 60% of its electricity from existing pipelines, and it should get on with solar power.
The Applicants listed in Friday’s Request are Continue reading
Reclaiming Florida’s Future, Tallahassee 2018-01-31
We visited every Florida statehouse member who represents any part of the Suwannee River Basin, Wednesday in Tallahasse, we the people attending ReThink Energy Florida’s event.
Suwannee Riverkeeper Banner in Waller Park; thanks Kristin Rubin.
And a primary goal of that lobbying was achieved: the fracking ban bill is sheduled for a committee vote Monday.
When: 4:30 PM – 6PM, Monday, February 5, 2018
Where:
Mallory Horne Committee Room, 37 Senate Office Building,
400 Monroe Street, Tallahassee, Florida
Event: facebook.
Stand with us and Continue reading
Motion to reject FERC DSEIS, to take Sabal Trail out of service, and to revoke its permit: WWALS to FERC 2017-12-29
FERC, if it follows its own rules, should reject the DSEIS, stop Sabal Trail, and revoke its permit, says a motion filed today with FERC by Suwannee Riverkeeper.
Followup blog posts will feature major sections and arguments from these 20 pages with their 93 footnotes. The basic arguments are summarized on the first page:
WWALS argues that no SEIS can be complete without accounting for GHG from Liquid Natural Gas (“LNG”) exports, nor without comparing natural gas to solar power, according to precedents already set by FPL, FERC, and others, which also reopen the whole basis of the FERC 2016 Order.
FERC may not care, but the D.C. Circuit Court may, or candidates for office, or the voting public.
-jsq, John S. Quarterman, Suwannee RIVERKEEPER®
You can join this fun and work by becoming a WWALS member today!
Sabal Trail no gas for a week?
Has Sabal Trail been shut down for a week? Its FERC-required online reports seem to say so, while Gulfstream and FGT numbers jumped up that same day. Read to the end for something even more interesting.
2017-11-13, Operationally Available Capacity
While Cap stays about the same 789 million dekatherms per day (MDTH/day), Nom drops from around 186 on November 13th to zero or less on November 14th, and stays zero for a week; still zero this morning.
2017-11-14, Operationally Available Capacity
What’s Nom? Apparently Continue reading
Nine Riverkeepers say FERC’s Sabal Trail SEIS unacceptable; request pipeline shutdown
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hahira, Georgia, November 21, 2017 — Factually incorrect, failing to account for LNG export or solar power, and irresponsible for not finding or creating a method for attributing environmental effects to greenhouse gases, as the DC Circuit Court had instructed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to do: that’s what nine Riverkeepers called FERC’s Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) yesterday; see their letter to FERC. The nine include all the Riverkeepers in the path of Sabal Trail and all parts of the Southeast Market Pipelines Project (SMPP) plus others in all three states invaded by those pipelines, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, plus Oklahoma, where the SMPP instigator, Florida Power & Light (FPL), owns a fracking field, The nine, who support fishable, swimmable, drinkable water, pointed out that all of FPL’s original excuses for Sabal Trail have been proven incorrect, and asked FERC to shut it down.
Sabal Trail in green, Transco and FSC in black, in Sierra Club interactive map of gas pipelines.
The Riverkeepers weren’t buying FERC’s ignorance: Continue reading
Eight Riverkeepers oppose FERC’s inaccurate and inadequate Sabal Trail SEIS and request pipeline shutdown 2017-11-20
Filed today as FERC Accession number 20171120-5130, “Opposition to the incorrect and inadequate FERC Sabal Trail SEIS and request for pipeline shut down by Suwannee Riverkeeper (WWALS) and Apalachicola, Ogeechee, Grand, Choctawhatchee, Chattahoochee, Indian, and Flint Riverkeepers.” (Or see WWALS PDF.)
From: The undersigned Waterkeepers
Date: November 20, 2017
To: Kimberly D. Bose, Secretary
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
888 First Street NE, Room 1A
Washington, DC 20426
Re: We oppose the incorrect and inadequate FERC Sabal Trail SEIS
FERC Docket Numbers CP14-554-002, CP15-16-003, and CP15-17-002
On September 27, 2017, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) published a draft Supplementary Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS).[1] That SEIS was in response to the August 27, 2017 DC Circuit Court decision[2] regarding FERC’s previous approval of Certificates of Convenience and Necessity for the three parts of the Southeast Markets Pipeline Project (SMPP), which are the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC’s (Transco) Hillabee Expansion Project in Docket No. CP15-16-000; Sabal Trail Transmission, LLC’s (Sabal Trail) Sabal Trail Project in Docket No. CP15-17-000; and Florida Southeast Connection, LLC’s (FSC) Florida Southeast Connection Project in Docket No. CP14-554-000. The judges ordered:
“The orders under review are vacated and remanded to FERC for the preparation of an environmental impact statement that is consistent with this opinion.“
The draft SEIS issued by FERC is clearly not consistent with the court’s opinion for the following reasons:
- The SEIS is factually incorrect in stating that: Continue reading
Senators from Rhode Island and Colorado show how FERC can use social cost of carbon
Senators from two states far away just did what none of the senators from Alabama, Georgia, or Florida have done: called out FERC on its failure to do what the judges ordered about the social cost of carbon for the fracked methane pipelines Sabal Trail, Transco, and Florida Southeast Connection.
FERC Accession Number 20171114-0043, “Comments of Senator Sheldon Whitehouse et al re the Southeast Market Pipelines Project under CP14-554 et al.” FERC’s generated PDF is not very legible, so the text below is from Sheldon Whitehouse, Press Releases, 8 November 2017, WHITEHOUSE, BENNET CALL ON FERC TO USE SOCIAL COST OF CARBON IN REVIEW OF PIPELINES, which also has linked to it a legible PDF. Continue reading
Hamilton Solar Farm by Duke Energy at Sabal Trail pipeline
Irony: Duke Energy is building a 75 megawatt solar farm right next to the Sabal Trail pipeline, of which Duke is a 7.5% owner.
Dust no more! The same place Chris Mericle reported having a dust storm little more than a week ago, last week he discovered Duke Energy is replacing the center pivots with solar panels.
SW 69th Drive and SW 40th Avenue, in Sabal Trail path digitized by WWALS.
The little red dot near the center of the above map is where Duke Energy says this solar farm will go. The red line is the Sabal Trail pipeline, next to the power line Duke will be using for the solar electricity. How about turn off the pipeline, Duke, and put solar panels along its right of way? As I computed using Sabal Trail’s own figures three and a half years ago, half that RoW acreage could generate just as much electricity from the sun as that pipeline would ever produce, and solar panel prices have gone down since then.
Duke Energy Florida, unknown date, Hamilton Solar Plant, Continue reading
FERC alleged SEIS for Sabal Trail and Sierra Club Petition
The agency most responsible for pushing new greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) is “not aware of” and “could not find a suitable method to attribute discrete environmental effects to GHG emissions.” That epitomizes the lack of seriousness of the five-page Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (SEIS) FERC issued last month for Sabal Trail and the rest of the Southeast Market Pipelines (SMP) Project. If “the ability to determine localized or regional impacts from GHGs by use of these models is not possible at this time,” FERC should take Sabal Trail out of service and stop approving any more pipelines until such models are possible.
Maybe the agency pushing the most GHG should create such a model if it does not exist.
Maybe it could at last get the history straight about which coal plants FPL claimed Sabal Trail was needed to “modernize”.
Until then, this alleged SEIS is junk and Sabal Trail should be shut down.
You can sign Sierra Club’s petition against this fake SEIS, even though FERC can’t be bothered to hold public hearings. If you need reasons, read on below.
Susan Salisbury, Palm Beach Post, 1 April 2014,
FPL’s Riviera Beach plant goes online Tuesday.
It’s already built, even though in 2013 FPL said Sabal Trail was needed to do that.
Now FERC’s SEIS names different plants as excuses.