Volts podcast: Rep. Sean Casten on Hot FERC Summer
In this episode, Rep. Sean Casten (D-Il.), the House Democrats’ resident clean-energy expert, discusses the importance of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the influence it has over US decarbonization, and the urgent need for Biden to appoint a new commissioner. We also get into our favorite FERC orders!
Full transcript of Volts podcast featuring Rep. Sean Casten, July 28, 2021
(PDF version)
David Roberts:
Greetings. Welcome to the Volts Podcast. I am your host, David Roberts.
As Volts subscribers are well aware, the fastest way to decarbonize the US economy is through clean electrification — decarbonizing the electricity sector and shifting energy use in other sectors like transportation and buildings over to electricity.
How can the federal government help that process along? Most control over power utilities and markets lies at the state level. There's only one federal agency with real jurisdiction over electricity: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.
FERC is not an agency people many people follow, or even know about — in fact, in the Volts household, it has become a kind of jokey shorthand for "the boring stuff dad writes about."
But it could play a key role in implementing Biden's climate agenda. And it has come to a crucial crossroads.
FERC has five commissioners. Currently, three are Republicans, but one of them, Neil Chatterjee, came to the end of his term on June 30. He has agreed to stay on temporarily because Biden, somewhat inexplicably, has yet to formally nominate anyone to replace him. Until he does, and the Senate confirms, the commission will not have a Democratic majority and won’t be able to get anything big done.
That’s unfortunate, because FERC has lots of big decisions to make — about transmission, electricity rates, and markets — with potentially transformative consequences. But the agency moves slowly, with rulemakings taking months or years, and it only has three and a half years to get everything done. Biden needs to get someone in that seat.
Enter Rep. Sean Casten. The Democrat from Illinois' 6th District, which includes wide swaths of the western suburbs of Chicago, is trying to draw attention to FERC and the importance of a bold and climate-minded new commissioner. He’s leading a communications campaign called "Hot FERC Summer," a twist on Megan Thee Stallion's "Hot Girl Summer." (Hey, nobody said getting eyes on FERC was easy.)
Casten, a member of the House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis, recently delivered a floor speech filled with Stallion-related puns of varying cheesiness, calling on Biden and Dems to nominate and approve a new commissioner quickly. He has also co-authored bills on transmission siting and ratemaking that clarify and reinforce FERC's obligation to take climate change into account in its decisions.
I have known Sean since the 2010s, when he was the CEO of a waste heat recovery company called Recycled Energy Development. His long experience in the clean energy industry informed some sharp analysis, and he occasionally wrote guest posts for my blog at Grist, the environmental news site I worked for at the time.
As you can imagine, it was a delight to see him win a seat in Congress in 2018, bringing his deep energy expertise to a body that has often lacked it. I was excited to geek out with him about FERC and the state of congressional energy politics.
Rep. Sean Cas
