Sponsors (5)
The bill strengthens climate, environmental-justice, and mitigation requirements and adds transparency to FERC permitting—providing greater protections for communities and more climate-informed decisions—but at the cost of higher compliance burdens, potential delays or limits on energy infrastructure, and shifts in local decision-making authority that could raise prices or affect reliability.
Residents in environmental-justice communities will have proposed projects evaluated for disproportionate harms, reducing the likelihood that pollution burdens remain concentrated in racial-ethnic minority, low-income, and Indigenous/tribal communities.
Communities near proposed energy infrastructure and the broader public will benefit from FERC-required quantification of reasonably foreseeable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, enabling more climate-informed permitting and the potential for reduced emissions from certificated projects.
Communities near projects will be more likely to receive pollution controls and other protections because applicants must propose mitigation and FERC must attach practicable mitigation conditions to certificates.
Utilities and energy companies (and potentially their customers) will face higher compliance costs and longer permitting timelines from additional analyses and mitigation requirements, which could raise project costs and, indirectly, consumer prices.
Taxpayers and middle-class families could face higher energy prices or reliability risks because projects emitting ≥100,000 tCO2e/year are presumed significant, a presumption that may slow or block infrastructure needed for energy reliability.
Requiring use of 20-year global warming potential values increases the assessed climate impact of short-lived pollutants, which may disadvantage certain technologies, invite litigation over methodology, and create regulatory uncertainty for applicants.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Directs FERC to weigh environmental and environmental-justice impacts and quantified GHGs (using IPCC 20-year GWPs), require mitigation proposals, and presume ≥100,000 tCO2e/yr is significant.
Introduced December 3, 2025 by Richard Joseph Durbin · Last progress December 3, 2025
Amends the Natural Gas Act to require the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to factor environmental harms, environmental-justice impacts, and quantified greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into decisions about whether to issue certificates for energy projects. Applicants must include mitigation proposals with certificate applications, FERC must attach practicable mitigation conditions to certificates when possible, and it must explain any approval that proceeds despite significant unmitigable effects. The law directs FERC to use specific definitions and to convert greenhouse gases using IPCC 20-year global warming potentials; it also creates a presumption that projects emitting 100,000 metric tons CO2-equivalent or more per year have a significant climate effect. The change increases the environmental review requirements and documentation FERC must consider and provide when approving covered projects.