If I’m not mistaken, this is the same pipeline Spectra Energy pulled out of bidding on back in August 2014, after numerous local resolutions against. Now it’s hit another big snag. And this also affects Southern Company and solar power: in a good way.

Aaron Isherwood and Nicholas Jimenez, Sierra Club, 6 January 2016, Forest Service Rejects Destructive Path for “Atlantic Coast Pipeline”,

A few days ago, the Forest Service rejected a destructive pathway Dominion Energy had proposed for the $5 billion “Atlantic Coast Pipeline” the company wants to build to carry natural gas from fracking in the Marcellus shale field in northern West Virginia to power plants along the coast of Virginia and North Carolina. This is great news for our National Forests, our ground water, and the climate.

Because the pipeline would have cleared a swath through two national forests (the George Washington and Monongahela), Dominion needed sign-off from the Forest Service. After reviewing the route, the Forest Service determined the environmental destruction the pipeline would cause was unacceptable and rejected the proposal in a January 19 letter

Southern Company (NYSE:SO, and parent of Georgia Power) is in the process of buying AGL Resources (NYSE: GAS). AGL Resources owns part of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline project.

So this Forest Service decision is a blow to SO CEO Tom Fanning’s repeated declaration (echoed by Georgia Power CEO Paul Bowers) that if they can’t use coal they have to have pipelines. And it’s more incentive for SO and Georgia Power to get on with Fanning’s other proclamations of “If somebody wants to buy distributed generation, I want to sell it to ’em” and “If distributed generation is eroding your growth, own distributed generation!” By distributed generation he means solar and wind power.

Stopping or slowing down any pipeline helps stop them all. Which helps free up resources to get on with sun and wind power.

-jsq

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