Sponsors (7)
The bill increases protection for overburdened communities and strengthens GHG accountability and transparency in FERC permitting, at the cost of higher compliance burdens, potential project delays that could affect reliability and prices, and added metric/implementation complexity for industry.
Overburdened and environmental-justice communities (racial-ethnic minorities, low-income people, and Indigenous/tribal communities) would face fewer new pollution burdens because FERC must evaluate disproportionate harms and may limit siting or expansion in those communities.
Project sponsors and the public would face stronger greenhouse-gas accountability: projects emitting ≥100,000 tCO2e/year are presumed climate-significant, and FERC must quantify and weigh GHG emissions (over a 20-year GWP) against benefits, increasing transparency and making mitigation or denial more likely for large emitters.
Applicants would be required to include mitigation proposals up front, encouraging earlier planning of emissions controls and community protections and improving the comprehensiveness of FERC decisionmaking.
Energy developers and utilities would face higher compliance costs and longer permitting timelines because applications must quantify GHGs, propose mitigation, and FERC may attach conditions—costs that can be passed to consumers or taxpayers.
Projects judged necessary for reliability or affordability could be delayed, conditioned, or blocked, risking local energy supply, grid reliability, or higher energy prices for consumers and governments.
Requiring a 20-year global warming potential metric and stricter review may create compliance complexity and regulatory uncertainty for industry, complicating implementation compared with the more familiar 100-year metric.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires FERC to weigh quantified GHG emissions and environmental-justice impacts in certificate decisions, sets a 100,000 tCO2e/yr presumptive GHG threshold, and requires mitigation proposals.
Adds a new substantive standard to FERC’s certificate review for natural gas facilities that requires the agency to assess and weigh quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and effects on environmental justice communities when deciding whether a proposed facility is required by public convenience and necessity. Applicants must submit mitigation proposals with certificate applications; FERC must attach practicable mitigation conditions or explain why mitigation below significance thresholds is not practicable. The bill sets a presumptive GHG significance threshold of at least 100,000 metric tons CO2-equivalent per year using a 20-year global warming potential from the latest IPCC assessment and defines key terms used in the new standard.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Sean Casten · Last progress December 3, 2025