Rich Glick, the Biden administration’s new chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, has been wielding his gavel with gusto in the first month of his tenure as head of the agency. Democrat Glick, who has been a member of the commission since November 2017, demonstrated at the FERC monthly (virtual) public meeting Thursday (Feb. 18) that he intends to be an activist.
The commission at the Thursday meeting took actions to clean up the FERC docket. The commission voted 4-1 to terminate the Trump administration’s signature attempt to use federal policy to “rescue” the coal industry. Trump had pledged during his campaign to end the false claim that the Obama administration was waging a war on coal. He and his energy secretary, former Texas Republican Gov. Rick Perry in late 2017 offered a FERC rulemaking to subsidize coal and nuclear plants, as more resilient than other technologies.
A Republican majority FERC then voted 5-0 to reject the Trump plan. But the Perry notice of proposed rulemaking stayed on the agenda throughout the remaining, Republican majority, potentially allowing it to be taken up again.
Clearly working behind the scenes one-on-one with the other FERC commission members, Glick was able to remove the item from the commission’s docket. Only Republican Neil Chatterjee objected. He kept the issue on the FERC playbook during his chairmanship, prior to Biden’s gift of the gavel to Glick.
In a written statement, Chatterjee cited the impact of the Texas deep freeze on the resilience issue. He said, “The severity of this week’s event – measured in duration, geographic scope, amount of load shed, customers affected, and amount of unplanned generation outage – suggests that, despite the lessons learned and actions taken in the past to improve winterization and gas-electric coordination, the bulk power system may not be able to adequately withstand extreme cold weather events.”
Glick also led the commission to reopen a review of its 1999 policy statement on gas infrastructure. Kevin McIntyre, a Trump former Republican chairman, revived the notice of inquiry in 2018, before he died in office. FERC got more than 3,000 comments. But it languished after McIntyre’s death. The vote to take up the notice again was unanimous.
The commission also voted, 3-1, to end a longstanding logjam at FERC that has prevented the PJM Interconnection years of delay in holding a capacity auction. The action was to expunge a footnote in a FERC order that raised concerns about New Jersey’s “default service auction” and the implications for the commission’s decision on approving the PJM “minimum offer price rule” or, in FERC-speak, MOPR.
Only Republican commissioner James Danly, former FERC general counsel and chairman for one meeting, objected. Danly became a lame-duck chairman after the Trump administration’s stealth demotion of Chatterjee in November, apparently because of Trump’s pique over Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), who was Chatterjee’s mentor.
Danly derided the decision to end the hold and let PJM go ahead with its long-delayed auction, “To have anything but a bright line against the participation of subsidized resources is simply an error and a dereliction of duty to keep our markets properly insulated,” he said.
Prior to the commission’s February meeting, Glick announced he is creating a new position at FERC to “integrate environmental justice and equity matters,” aimed at vetting gas pipeline proposals. “This position is not just a title,” he said. “I intend to do what it takes to empower this new position to to ensure that environmental justice and equity concerns finally get the attention they deserve.” Prior to his appointment to FERC, Glick was the key Democratic staffer on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Glick this week also criticized Texas for its “go it alone” policy of grid management, stating, “That strikes me as cutting off your proverbial nose to spite your face. He said, “Does it really make sense to isolate yourself and limit your ability to get power from neighboring regions, just to keep FERC at bay?”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told reporters at her briefing on Thursday that the Energy and Commerce Committee will examine the Texas debacle “to see how things could have turned out better and will turn out better in the future.”
–Kennedy Maize