Trump wants to control the nation's independent energy regulator

Jun 03, 2023

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In today’s edition, we’ll cover why Rep. Greg Casar (D-Tex.) staged a thirst and hunger strike yesterday to urge heat protections for workers. But first:

Former president Donald Trump has campaigned on a pledge to rein in “out-of-control” independent agencies if voters return him to the White House in 2025.

That pledge applies to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, a five-member independent agency with significant sway over the nation’s climate and energy policies, The Climate 202 has learned.

Trump’s campaign website says “President Trump will bring the independent regulatory agencies … back under Presidential authority, as the Constitution demands. No longer will unelected members of the Washington Swamp be allowed to act as the fourth branch of our Republic.”

The plan is the brainchild of Russell Vought, who led the White House Office of Management and Budget during the Trump administration and now runs a think tank called the Center for Renewing America. Vought and other Trump allies have already drafted an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit actions to the White House for review, the New York Times reported last week, citing people familiar with the matter.

Trump’s campaign website only cites the Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission as examples of agencies that the executive order would affect. But a spokeswoman for the Center for Renewing America confirmed that the plan would apply to FERC.

“FERC is an independent agency and thus would be included in any sort of independent agency executive order,” the spokeswoman told The Climate 202.

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

It’s still too early to say with certainty how the plan would affect FERC. The election is 15 months away, and the Trump campaign has not yet offered more specific details.

But at least one former FERC chairman has voiced concern that the plan would erode the commission’s long-standing freedom from political interference.

“FERC is an independent agency with a bipartisan configuration. And I think in the long term, it’s in both parties’ interest to maintain that,” said Neil Chatterjee, a Republican who chaired the commission in 2017 and again from 2018 to 2020. “I don’t see how it would be in the long-term interest of conservatives or liberals to make FERC another unilateral agency like the [Environmental Protection Agency].”

FERC has long operated on the principle that it should be a neutral arbiter, indifferent to whether a proposed project relies on natural gas or wind energy. Although its five commissioners are nominated by the president, no more than three may be of the same political party, and it is known for reaching bipartisan agreements.

Of course, Chatterjee is not exactly unbiased. Trump in 2020 demoted Chatterjee from FERC chairman to commissioner, a move the Republican thinks may have been in retaliation for his efforts to set a price on carbon emissions, the main contributor to global warming.

Some energy lawyers say the Trump plan could have a chilling effect on FERC’s further efforts to address climate change.

FERC currently has two Democratic and two Republican commissioners. But the lack of a fifth commissioner hasn’t stopped the agency from drafting rules aimed at easing the construction of long-distance transmission lines, which are needed to carry clean energy across the country.

The standards could play a crucial role in meeting President Biden’s goal of 100 percent clean electricity by 2035. Acting FERC chairman Willie L. Phillips, a Democrat, will probably try to finalize the rules before the end of Biden’s first term.

But if FERC faces political pressures from a Trump White House beginning in 2025, the agency could “weaken” the implementation of these standards and decline to pursue other climate efforts, said Ari Peskoe, the director of Harvard Law School’s Electricity Law Initiative.

“You could imagine FERC simply not pursuing those sort of initiatives … if it’s directly controlled by the Trump administration,” Peskoe said.

Rep. Sean Casten (D-Ill.), a former clean-energy executive who has sought to boost FERC’s profile, told The Climate 202 yesterday that he shares some of these concerns. But he rejected the notion that the commission hasn’t already been politicized by Trump.

“You had Neil Chatterjee forced out because he had the gall to say we should be thinking about carbon,” Casten said.

FERC spokeswoman Celeste Miller declined to comment for this report. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that crafted a policy roadmap for the next Republican administration, also declined to comment.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Tex.) refused water and food for eight hours yesterday to protest the lack of protections for workers during deadly heat waves fueled by climate change, we report with our colleague María Luisa Paúl.

At a news conference outside the Capitol, where the temperature was a steamy 88 degrees, Casar called on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration to swiftly implement a national workplace heat standard. President Biden directed OSHA to begin crafting such a standard nearly two years ago, but the agency has not yet proposed a regulation.

“I think [the strike] is what’s going to propel the Congress and the White House to enact federal heat protections for everyone, because the summers are only going to be getting hotter from here,” Casar told The Post after the press conference. The Democrat also blasted Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) for signing a law last month to block water breaks for construction workers in the state, where temperatures have soared past 100 degrees for multiple days this summer.

Spokespeople for OSHA and Abbott did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is expanding the panel’s ongoing investigation into environmental and human rights abuses in auto supply chains, The Post’s Evan Halper reports.

In a letter sent Monday to the Lear Corp., the world’s biggest supplier of leather car seats, Wyden demanded that the company account for its relationships with firms suspected of engaging in Amazon deforestation and forced labor. He expressed skepticism of the company’s claim that it monitors the practices of the Brazilian cattle firms that supply it.

Wyden also accused a major supplier to Lear, Brazil-based JBS, of “turning a blind eye as parts of its supply chains burn down the Amazon, push the world toward climate catastrophe, and undercut American ranchers who play by the rules on international trade.”

Michigan-based Lear — which last year was recognized by General Motors as a top global supplier — said in a statement that its “comprehensive supply chain management system” requires compliance with the company’s anti-deforestation and human rights policies. “If a supplier violates our policies or requirements, we investigate and respond accordingly, up to and including termination of contract,” the statement said.

The letter comes after the Republican chairs of the House Ways and Means Committee and select committee on China last week intensified their investigation of Ford’s partnership with Chinese battery manufacturing giant CATL. The two companies recently announced a $3.5 billion venture through which Ford would make battery cells developed by the Chinese firm at a Michigan plant.

The Atlantic Ocean’s sensitive circulation system has become slower and less resilient, raising the possibility that this crucial part of the climate system could collapse within the next few decades, according to a study published yesterday in the journal Nature Communications, The Post’s Sarah Kaplan reports.

The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, transports warm, salty water from the tropics to the North Atlantic and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. But as rising global temperatures melt Arctic ice, the resulting influx of cold freshwater could shut down the system entirely. The shift would be as abrupt and irreversible as turning off a light switch, and it could lead to dramatic changes in weather on either side of the Atlantic.

However, some scientists cautioned that the study’s findings should be taken with a grain of salt. They noted that the research extrapolates about the future based on past data from a limited region of the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, waters off South Florida rose to 101.1 degrees Monday evening, a level that could be unprecedented globally, although there are no official records maintained for ocean temperature, The Post’s Ian Livingston and Jason Samenow report. The temperature taken from a buoy in Manatee Bay, about 40 miles south of Miami, was measured at levels about five feet below the surface, where waters can easily heat up.

Divot's cub tucks in perfectly at this size 💚 pic.twitter.com/HucXaVWoSG

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