Romany Webb, Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia Law School, and EDFs Michael Panfil contributed to this post. It can also be found on the Sabin Centers website.)
From pipelines that are destabilized from melting permafrost, to powerline-sparked wildfires caused by drought, the effects of climate change have a significant impact on infrastructure in the United States. They also increase the risk to the environment as well as communities.
A new study by Environmental Defense Fund and Columbia Law Schools Sabin Center for Climate Change Law found that federal agencies fail to adequately consider climate change impacts when reviewing energy projects under the National Environmental Policy Act.
This finding is inconsistent with NEPAs requirement for federal agencies to carefully consider the environmental consequences of proposed actions.
Federal courts have repeatedly ruled that federal agencies must include climate change in their NEPA reviews. Climate change is relevant for NEPA reviews in two ways. First, any greenhouse gas emission an action causes contributes to climate change. Second, consideration of these emissions is crucial part of evaluating actions environmental effects. Second, climate change can have an effect on an action and alter its environmental impacts, so they must also be considered.
Both types of analysis are required to meet NEPA’s specific requirements. Our study, however, focuses only on the second category of analysis, which we call climate impact analysis. Climate impact analysis helps NEPA achieve its goal of ensuring informed decision making by providing federal agencies and the general public with vital information about the climate-related risk facing an action and its resilience. This allows for an assessment of the likelihood that climate change will alter or worsen the environmental outcomes of actions.
Our new report Evaluating Climate Risk In NEPA Reviews: Current Policies and Recommendations For Reform offers recommendations to ensure that climate risk is properly considered in environmental reviews. This is consistent with NEPAs requirements. The report explains how climate change impacts can manifest in different ways depending upon location, time, and type infrastructure. Simply noting climate change in passing does not satisfy an agency’s NEPA obligations.
To adequately inform agency decision-making, it is necessary to analyze climate change impacts:
- HolisticIt takes into account all climate impacts that can reasonably be predicted and the risks they pose to the proposed action and all alternatives.
- SpecificThis requires climate data that is relevant to the proposed actions area, timescale, as well as other relevant characteristics.
- It’s possible to take actionThis will provide the agency with the information it requires to take action to address climate risks
We reviewed 65 EISs that federal agencies have produced in recent years to assess whether they are conducting this type climate impact analysis. These detailed reports, which NEPA requires federal agencies prepare for any major action that is likely to have a significant effect on the environment, were reviewed to determine if federal agencies are doing so. Given the vulnerability of energy infrastructures to climate impacts, it was expected that EISs for energy related actions should include high-quality climate-impact analysis. Our survey therefore focused on EISs relating to onshore energy activities, from 2016 through 2020.
We investigated whether the EISs are:
- Climate impacts on the affected environment
- Analyze climate impacts of the proposed action and its environmental consequences
- Comparing climate-related risk across alternative options
- Evaluation of adaptation measures to mitigate climate-related risk
- Consider the nexus of climate impacts and the actions that have an effect on environmental justice communities
None of the EISs that we reviewed provided a comprehensive, specific, or actionable analysis.. Although most EISs acknowledged that climate changes would impact the local environment of an action they were evaluating, less than half of them assessed whether or how climate change might alter the environmental outcomes. Less than 10% also compared climate-related risk across alternatives. Even when federal agencies did conduct climate impacts analyses, they often used outdated or incomplete data which limited the utility of the analysis. Some federal agencies seem to be unaware that there are already publicly available data and tools that could help them do a better analysis.
Our findings indicate a gap in the requirements of NEPA and current agency practices. We recommend that the Council on Environmental Quality and other federal agencies immediately take steps to ensure NEPA compliance.
We recommend that CEQ issue regulations requiring federal agencies analyze climate impacts in environmental reviews. We also suggest regulatory text to do this. CEQ should also issue updated guidance identifying best practices in conducting climate impact analysis. Each federal agency should review and update its NEPA regulations as necessary to ensure robust analysis. CEQ should coordinate across federal agencies with relevant experts, and support or create a public, central database of relevant climate impacts information. Our report lists many sources of such information.
CEQ has started the process of NEPA regulations being updated, Review of its current NEPA climate guidance. CEQ should also ensure that agencies take into account both the climate change impacts and the contribution they make to it.
You can read the complete report here, and the executive summary is available here.