The LA Times reports that two US federal agencies in the business of financing international fossil fuel projects like oil refineries and power plants have agreed to start scrutinizing the carbon output of these big emitters.
Export-Import Bank of the United States and the Overseas Private Investment Coporation – finance agencies that help drive US exports and aid development overseas – had been fighting a seven-year lawsuit by Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and four US cities. The plaintiffs argued that carbon dioxide emissions from projects funded by the two organizations are hurting these cities economically: “global warming, the suit argued, influences Santa Monica’s water supply, the sea level near Oakland’s airport and the snow on Rocky Mountain ski slopes” near Boulder, Colorado, according to the LAT story. They said these impacts should have been assessed ahead of time under the National Environmental Policy Act, the seminal US environmental law.
The agencies settled the suit Friday, a few weeks into Obama’s tenure – no coincidence, suggests Bill Hewitt over on his blog. “There’s a new sheriff in town,” agrees Salon’s Andrew Leonard, pointing out that last week the Obama EPA started its own lawsuit over a coal power plant upgrade in Kansas that allegedly failed to add in required pollution controls. The finance agencies’ settlement is intriguing because the battle they’re conceding is reminiscent of others that Bush’s people fought tooth and nail until their very last days. Earlier in this suit over fossil fuel funding, says the LAT, the Bush administration argued that “alleged impacts of global climate change are too remote and speculative” to be part of project reviews. We heard essentially the same rationale in December when they pre-empted the possibility of using impacts on endangered species as the basis for limiting emissions. A parallel struggle over regulating power plant carbon footprints under the Clean Air Act (see this post and subsequent developments) has yet to be addressed by the Obama team.
The settlement has the agencies committing $250 million each to renewable energy projects, reports the LAT. Friends of the Earth announced that the EIB has promised to take emissions into account when evaluating new ventures and to develop a carbon policy, while OPIC will aim to reduce its projects’ greenhouse gas emissions 20% over the next ten years. That could add up: an earlier LA Times investigation (h/t DeSmogBlog), based on data from Friends of the Earth, counted up at least 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from just a subset of the projects the two funded in 1993-2006.
Anna Barnett