Group items tagged

Today's announcement that Joseph Kelliher, chairman of the powerful Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and a commissioner since 2003, is stepping down provides President-elect Barack Obama with an opportunity to fix an agency with a history of promoting deregulation and power company profits at the expense of fair energy prices to American families. Under Kelliher's watch, FERC continued the failed policy of deregulation, resulting in consumers paying billions of dollars more in home energy costs than if markets under FERC control had been properly regulated. Kelliher, who served as the Energy Department's liaison to Vice President Dick Cheney's infamously corporate-biased Energy Task Force prior to becoming FERC commissioner, consistently overlooked the agency's top statutory mandate: to ensure that all electric rates be "just and reasonable."As a result, Kelliher's FERC has undergone ongoing criticism by states and consumer groups for its backward priorities.

Less than a week after the Interior Department published the findings of a report claiming that 25% of the nation's electricity could be supplied by offshore wind farms, the Department also reached an agreement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) over how the two agencies would handle the permitting and licensing of all types of renewable energy development on the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) of the United States. On Thursday, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff signed a memorandum of understanding (pdf) that establishes a streamlined process by which Interior's Minerals Management Service and the FERC will lease, license and regulate all renewable energy development activities on the OCS. According to Interior Secretary Salazar, the agreement will spur the development of clean, renewable energy, which he called, "the growth industry of the 21st Century," adding that, "Our nation's economic future demands we lead that competition."

Federal regulators said Friday that Fort Chicago Energy Partners LP's (FCE.UN.T) proposed liquefied natural gas terminal in the Pacific Northwest could be built without significant environmental losses, paving the way for possible approval. In a final environmental impact statement, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission said the Jordan Cove LNG import terminal proposed near the Oregon coast, plus a 234-mile natural gas pipeline that would ship imported gas from the terminal to nearby interstate pipelines, could be built in a way that minimizes the potential threat of earthquakes, accidents and a terrorist attack, as well as potential harm to soil, wetlands and water resources.

In remarks focused on the promise of renewable energy and demand-side management, US Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Jon Wellinghoff on Wednesday suggested that there may never be another new nuclear or coal power plant built in the country. Pointing to upwards of 1,000 GW of potential wind energy in the Midwest and West, new solar power production and storage technologies and emerging hydrokinetic power resources, Wellinghoff asserted that renewables are poised to play a substantial, gap-filling role in the US energy picture.