PV Magazine covered the Senate confirmation of Mark Christie and Allison Clements to FERC, quoting AEE's Jeff Dennis. Read excerpts below and the full piece here.
The Senate on Monday voted to confirm Mark Christie and Allison Clements to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), bringing the agency to a full five members for the first time in nearly two years...
Whereas Clements is a former senior attorney for the National Resources Defense Council and policy adviser for the Energy Foundation, Christie is a former commissioner at Virginia’s State Corporation Commission.
“He’ll come with a good sense of the needs of state policy makers,” said Jeff Dennis, managing director and general counsel at Advanced Energy Economy, an industry association focused on transforming public policy to enable rapid growth of advanced energy businesses. Commissioners with state policy regulatory experience have been in short supply at FERC for the last few years, other officials noted...
Clements and FERC Commissioner Richard Glick, who until Clements’s confirmation this week was FERC’s lone Democrat, are both tipped to replace FERC’s current chair Commissioner James Danly during the Biden administration...
Until Commissioner Chatterjee’s term ends in June, FERC will have a Republican majority, but the Biden administration is expected to nominate a Democrat as Chatterjee’s replacement, flipping the majority over. President-elect Biden is also expected to appoint a Democrat as FERC Chair early next year.
Glick is favored to lead FERC, partly because he already serves on the Commission, but Clements’s clean energy pedigree and the Biden administration’s interest in having more women in agency-leading roles mean that she is also a likely nominee...
Given the new composition of the Commission and FERC’s proposed policy statement on carbon pricing, some officials think that FERC might use its jurisdiction to consider market rules for carbon pricing to broaden the conversation and allow Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs) and Independent System Operators (ISOs) to accommodate other state market reforms and policies, including renewable portfolio standard mandates for achieving states’ environmental goals.