The Keystone Pipeline Precedent

Others have commented on President Obama’s decision to punt on the Keystone XL pipeline project.  Ordering additional review pushes the decision past the next election and enables the Administration to evade responsibility should the project ultimately fail.  As those who study environmental law know, delays of this sort are often enough to derail major projects for good — and that’s certainly the outcome some environmentalists anticipate.

The CFR’s Michael Levi suggests environmentalists are being short-sighted, as “the tactics and arguments that have won the day are ultimately as likely to retard clean energy development as they are to thwart dirty fuels.”

oil pipelines are hardly the only pieces of energy infrastructure that will require government approval in coming years. This is particularly true if the United States wants to build a new clean-energy economy.

The country has already seen strong opposition to offshore wind energy in Massachusetts, including from environmental activists and local landowners, on the grounds that it will ruin spectacular ocean views. Solar plants will need to be built in sunny deserts, but local opponents continue to insist that the landscape blight would be intolerable. New long distance transmission lines will have to cross multiple states in order to bring that power to the places that need it most. Once again, though, a patchwork of local concerns and inconsistent state regulation is already making the task exceedingly difficult. . . .

Energy experts often note that it would be impossible to recreate today’s energy infrastructure, given the intensity of opposition to pretty much any new development. The environmentalists’ victory against Keystone XL will only reinforce that judgment. But realizing their broader vision — a low-carbon economy that enhances the nation’s security and helps avoid dangerous climate change — will require defeating the same sort of local opposition that they have just embraced.

The experience of Cape Wind confirms this conundrum, as I have noted for some time.

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