Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions · Notable

Bar FERC from using climate change to block LNG projects

Done

408 12. Department of Energy and Related Commissions

“Should not use environmental issues like climate change as a reason to stop LNG projects.”

What has happened

  1. Done

    A refrain-from ask, sorted and leveled under playbook 3b: the ask is that environmental issues not be *used as a reason to stop* an LNG project, so not stopping one is the compliance, and the ask is `done` while no project is stopped on that ground and would become `reversed` the day one is. No LNG project was stopped in the window on climate or any other environmental ground. The four projects whose authorizations the D.C. Circuit had remanded for further environmental analysis all came through it: FERC issued the final supplemental environmental impact statement for Venture Global's CP2 LNG and CP Express Pipeline on 2025-05-15, for Commonwealth LNG on 2025-05-22, and for Rio Grande LNG / Rio Bravo Pipeline and Texas LNG Brownsville on this date, and the projects proceeded. On the export side the Department of Energy closed out the instrument that had been the standing environmental case for restricting exports, publishing its response to comments on the 2024 LNG Export Study on 2025-05-22 and resuming authorizations; the window's Federal Register LNG docket is a continuous run of applications granted, extended and amended, with no denial on environmental grounds. What the earlier pass held this at `not-started` for — that "nothing removed climate from its analysis" — is not what the Quote asks. It asks that climate not be the reason a project is stopped, not that climate be dropped from a NEPA document; on the ask's own terms the record is compliance.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Covered by the negative search run once for all the FERC pipeline asks. The four final supplemental EIS notices are Federal Register records 2025-08650, 2025-09242, 2025-14836 and 2025-14837; they show projects moving, not a policy change, and an earlier reading took them as context rather than Evidence for this ask.

  • Settled on review, 2026-09-01, the other way. An earlier note named the alternative reading — “an alternative reading treats a bar on blocking as satisfied while no project is blocked, which would make this a preserve ask and done” — and the site’s rule for refrain-from asks, where the administration’s own inaction is the compliance, now adopts it. The Status moved from not started to done, dated 2025-08-05, the last of the four supplemental EISs (the earlier date was 2026-08-31). The four notices that earlier reading called “context rather than Evidence” are Evidence under the refrain-from reading, because what they evidence is projects moving rather than being stopped.
  • The rejected ground — that FERC’s own policy on climate in NEPA analysis is unchanged — is a different ask from this one, and it belongs to #931 (FERC as an economic rather than a climate regulator), which stays at attempted.
  • The four FR records were confirmed through the Federal Register API on 2026-09-01 (document numbers 2025-08650, 2025-09242, 2025-14836, 2025-14837 and 2025-09208); a Federal Register API record whose title matches the claim counts as read.
  • FERC orders are not published in the Federal Register, and ferc.gov would not open for us, so any Commission order after the notices cited could not be read. Reading those orders would confirm the authorizations, not change the Status.
Action
restrict
Object
FERC review of LNG export facilities
ID
1037