FERC Commissioner Shows Big Business Attitude

Comments on remarks made by Tony Clark for FERC, December 1, 2015

Essay by S. Tom Bond, Resident Farmer at Jane Lew, Lewis County, WV

Tony Clark is a Commissioner of FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The remarks made on which I comment were made on December 1, 2015 to the Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee, Energy and Power of the House of Representatives.

Consciously or unconsciously, Clark is a toady to big business. At one point he states “Infrastructure… engenders a level of opposition that was rarely seen in the past.” He goes on to say there is an opposition that says No! based on all projects of a certain type. He is referring to pipelines and power lines, and says…”it is an opposition to all infrastructure as a matter of ideology.” Of course he does not get into just what that ideology is.

You and I know it is based on the false claims that this is the only way the country can go forward. It ignores climate change the “white elephant in the room,” and a host of considerations about human rights, the right to be free of industry caused sickness, free from contamination by industrial chemicals and casual disturbance of ground cover, the destruction of productive capacity of land in the face of rapidly increasing world population, and a host of other considerations the reader is familiar with. The hydrocarbon industry position.

He complains about coal facilities that must be closed before they are paid for, implying that investors shouldn’t be responsible for investments that fail to prosper. Clark says ” I would emphasize that if a generation resource shift is compelled prior to necessary infrastructure completion, electric reliability could be a challenge, but regardless, affordability will almost certainly suffer. Substantially higher energy costs have been the result everywhere this has occurred, and it will not be any different in this case if expanded infrastructure is not built in time to meet the generation mix changes required by the regulation”.

Why should ratepayers (customers) have to pay for investor’s over optimism? What is capitalism about? Insurance? People who have money to invest aren’t responsible for their choices? (Wonder if I could find a federal agency that would let me buy cattle like that?)

Then he attacks the EPA. “The impact of this rule will not be evenly felt because of the nature of the EPA targets themselves. To be perfectly honest, some states don’t have all that difficult a road to compliance. This is often related not so much to any particular policy choice the state made, but rather to the vagaries of the math behind the state-by-state targets set by EPA in relation to the nature and vintage of a state’s legacy electric generation fleet.” That implies the responsibility of balancing the energy mix belongs to the states, it shouldn’t be the responsibility of the investor-supplier!

Clark goes on in the testimony before the subcommittee to use his home state of North Dakota as an example. It is easy for North Dakota meet full attainment of EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards. However it will be difficult to meet the required reduction, because a large number of wind turbines have been built, but the fleet of coal fired electrical plants is relatively new. In other words, it is the responsibility of the state and the ratepayers to restore investors in spite of their error in their judgment. (Once again, where could I find that kind of help for my business. But I’m a little guy, so it doesn’t make a difference. Right?)

To Clark, climate change doesn’t make a difference. Investors aren’t responsible for their investment errors. Technological change and public opinion don’t make any difference. The way must be made safe for big business!

Earlier in the report Clark says FERC has approved “7 LNG export projects, totaling 10.62 Bcf/d in capacity. Another 10 projects have pending formal applications in various stages of review totaling 12.53 Bcf/d in capacity. Not included in these totals are the 12 other projects that are in the “pre-filing” stage.” So he doesn’t mind blowing through the US’s limited natural resource, which must last forever, either.

Clark’s full remarks may be found here: