## Facts

- Environmental and public-health nonprofits challenged the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) approval of multiple federal oil-and-gas leases in Wyoming, Utah, and Colorado.
- BLM conducted Environmental Assessments (EAs) and issued Findings of No Significant Impact (FONSIs) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA).
- Plaintiffs alleged BLM’s analyses inadequately addressed greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate-change effects, including cumulative impacts.
- In earlier litigation concerning Wyoming lease sales, the court found NEPA violations and remanded to BLM without vacating the leases.
- On remand, BLM issued a supplemental EA and a new FONSI for the Wyoming leases, asserting it cured the deficiencies.
- Plaintiffs contended the supplemental EA still understated and incompletely quantified emissions, relied on annual estimates rather than project-life totals, and did not meaningfully analyze cumulative emissions or explain the refusal to use tools such as a carbon-budget comparison.
- Industry groups and energy-producing states intervened to defend BLM’s leasing decisions.

## Issues

1. Whether BLM’s supplemental EA and FONSI for the Wyoming leases satisfied NEPA’s “hard look” requirement for GHG emissions and climate impacts following the prior remand.
2. Whether BLM’s NEPA analyses for lease sales in Utah and Colorado similarly failed to adequately address climate impacts and cumulative GHG emissions.
3. Whether BLM reasonably explained its methodological choices, including limiting emissions quantification and declining to perform a carbon-budget-type analysis.

## Decision

- The court granted plaintiffs’ motion for summary judgment in part.
- The court denied the federal defendants’ and intervenors’ cross-motions for summary judgment.
- The court held BLM’s supplemental EA for the Wyoming leases still did not comply with NEPA because it inadequately analyzed climate impacts and GHG emissions.
- The court remanded the challenged leasing decisions to BLM for further NEPA analysis, declining to vacate all leases.

## Legal Principles

- NEPA requires agencies to take a “hard look” at the environmental consequences of proposed actions and provide a reasonably thorough, well-explained analysis that permits informed decisionmaking and public review.
- For fossil-fuel leasing decisions, NEPA generally requires quantification of GHG emissions when feasible and a non-conclusory discussion connecting emissions estimates to climate effects.
- Cumulative-impact analysis must address the incremental impact of the challenged action in combination with other past, present, and reasonably foreseeable actions; generalized references to broader emissions data are insufficient if not tied to the specific decision.
- Agencies must explain key methodological choices and omissions; when declining to use a proposed analytical approach, the agency must provide a reasoned, record-based explanation.
- After a judicial remand identifying NEPA deficiencies, the agency must meaningfully correct those deficiencies; minor revisions that leave core analytical gaps unresolved do not satisfy the remand obligation.

## Conclusion

The court concluded that BLM’s post-remand supplemental NEPA analysis for the Wyoming oil-and-gas leases still failed to adequately quantify and contextualize GHG emissions and cumulative climate impacts, and it remanded for additional agency analysis while leaving the leases in place pending further review.


WildEarth Guardians v. Bernhardt, 502 F. Supp. 3d 237 (D.D.C. 2020)