Media contact: Aisha Dukule, SELC Communications Manager, 202-828-8382, adukule@selc.org
WASHINGTON – On March 2, the Southern Environmental Law Center, on behalf of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, 7 Directions of Service, Appalachian Voices, Katie Whitehead, and Robert McNutt, filed with Sierra Club a joint request for rehearing with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) challenging its authorization for the Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line Company, LLC to construct and operate the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project (SSEP).
SSEP would run from Virginia to Alabama, moving up to 1.5 billion cubic feet of methane gas per day, which is enough to power five or six new large combined cycle plants. If allowed to move forward, the project would be the largest pipeline project on the East Coast in a decade since the Atlantic Coast Pipeline and the Mountain Valley Pipeline. Transco estimates the project will cost more than $1.5 billion.
“The exorbitant cost of this project will be stuck in ratepayers’ wallets for decades, even if data center load projections diminish. FERC needs to take in the entire picture of evolving load uncertainty within the context of captive, powerless ratepayers and grant this request for rehearing,” said Shelley Hudson Robbins, Senior Decarbonization Manager at the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. “The stakes are simply too high right now to double down on expensive methane infrastructure.”
“FERC’s decision reads like it was written by the applicant, Transco: accept the utility narrative without question, arbitrarily dismiss or completely disregard any contrary evidence, and move construction forward before the agency process is even complete and parties have access to any potential relief from the courts. That’s why we’re asking the commission to reconsider its authorization, stop construction, and follow the law,” said Megan C. Gibson, senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center. “FERC should rescind its notice to proceed immediately and fix these errors before communities and landowners suffer irreversible damage.”
“FERC disregarded the facts by approving this unnecessary pipeline,” said Caroline Hansley, Sierra Club’s Campaign Organizing Strategist. “By ignoring expert evidence, community concerns, and basic legal standards, FERC has placed the burden of paying for SSEP on everyday families, while allowing pipeline companies and utilities to rake in profits. FERC must rehear this case to uphold its duty.”
Transco’s expansion project represents a multi-generational investment in fossil fuels at a moment of deepening urgency in the climate crisis. Residential and industrial consumers have demanded cleaner, more affordable energy options that will reduce methane emissions and help us avert the most catastrophic consequences of climate change. If constructed, SSEP could result in as much as 31 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year for decades, putting federal and state emissions reduction goals firmly out of reach.
FERC authorized this gas expansion by treating private agreements between Transco and electric utilities as enough to determine the public need of SSEP, while arbitrarily disregarding credible evidence to the contrary. Based on the available evidence, long-term demand for this massive amount of new capacity may not materialize as Transco and its shippers have projected. Most of the project’s capacity is tied to power plants with Duke Energy, Southern Company Services, and others, whose captive customers may ultimately bear costs through utilities’ rate structures. The request for rehearing points out that the landscape is filled with incentives to over-contract for new pipeline capacity, even when long-term need is uncertain.
The rehearing request also points to evidence FERC had available showing that utility load-growth projections—particularly projections driven by data center demand—are highly uncertain and may be inflated by duplicative, non-binding requests for electric service (“phantom load”). FERC arbitrarily dismissed this evidence documenting that data center developers routinely submit duplicate requests across multiple jurisdictions to preserve optionality and gain leverage.
The rehearing request also challenges FERC’s review of SSEP’s environmental impacts, arguing that the commission overlooked the project’s massive scale, and that FERC’s analysis of the project’s impacts to waterways and effect on greenhouse gas emissions was legally deficient under NEPA and compromised FERC’s final decision to authorize the project.
On February 25, before the deadline to file requests for rehearing period was complete, FERC authorized Transco to begin constructing SSEP. In doing so, FERC risks irreparable harm to communities along the route and undermines meaningful oversight and due process. The request for rehearing asks FERC to rescind the Notice to Proceed and stop construction activities immediately, then grant rehearing and abrogate the certificate authorization.
