A federal judge's recent invalidation of the Biden administration's social cost of carbon metric is having some unintended effects—including a second oil and gas leasing pause.
The Biden administration has been using an interim social cost of carbon of $51 per ton—the same figure used under Barack Obama—since last year, when it raised the cost from the Trump-era $1 per ton. But a federal judge in Louisiana ruled earlier this month that only Congress—and not the president—can set the social cost of carbon.
“Work surrounding public-facing rules, grants, leases, permits and other projects has been delayed or stopped altogether so that agencies can assess whether and how they can proceed,” the Department of Justice wrote in a legal filing late Saturday.
The ruling resulted from a case brought by Republican states that argued the higher cost of carbon would hurt fossil fuel production on federal public lands. Ironically, the ruling is now delaying a first quarter lease sale in Wyoming. Since the Biden administration used the $51 per ton figure in its environmental analysis of the 179,000-acre lease sale, the analysis has been invalidated. As a result, Interior has delayed announcing that sale or any others, drawing criticism from the oil and gas industry as well as Republicans in Congress.
The Justice Department said it will appeal the judge's decision. But in the meantime, a number of federal agencies—including Interior—will have to decide whether to revise environmental analyses based on the ruling. That puts the Interior Department in a no-win situation, as it could be sued if it proceeds with lease sales based on the $51 per ton figure, but it could also be sued if it moves ahead with the lease sale without accounting for the cost of carbon.
“Right now the Interior Department is facing a legal minefield,” Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, told the Washington Post. “It’s kind of damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
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