Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee is not expecting the presidential elections, regardless of the outcome, to significantly alter the direction of the commission, pointing instead to the rapid change in the energy industry as the source of challenges to energy regulators.
Participating Aug. 11 in a virtual session of the Ontario Energy Association's speaker series, Chatterjee noted "seismic shifts" in the energy landscape in past years brought on by the shale revolution, growth of renewables, and technological advancements such as battery storage.
While the evolving energy landscape has fostered significant benefits, making it an exciting time to be a regulator with influence over the future of the grid, Chatterjee said this critical time also comes with certain struggles.
Ensuring infrastructure is in place to meet the US' electricity needs and crafting market structures that accommodate change and foster innovation were the most pressing challenges facing energy regulators tasked with assuring affordable, reliable and secure access to energy for consumers, he said.
To get the right infrastructure in place, he said "we need to incent investments and innovations, protect our infrastructure from cyberattacks and facilitate siting."
Siting energy projects, however, has turned into the most difficult challenge for regulators.
While FERC does not site transmission, it is working to update its return on equity and rate incentives policies for those projects. In regards to natural gas infrastructure, Chatterjee said he has worked to streamline the review process for pipelines and LNG export terminals while balancing consideration of the impacts those projects have on landowners.
"I believe that siting becomes easier to do when people are well informed and included in the process, but I have no illusions about the bigger picture," he said. "There's increasing opposition to energy infrastructure generally. The public needs to be able to see the economic, reliability, and environmental benefits from energy infrastructure ... or they will not support it."
Market barriers
As for the development of market policies that can keep pace with the changing energy picture, Chatterjee stressed the need to break down barriers to market entry, pointing to the commission's electric storage market participation rule as an example.
The commission is working on a similar rulemaking to remove barriers to wholesale power market participation for distributed energy resource aggregations. Chatterjee said that work would be another game-changing effort, adding that he was very optimistic that the commission would progress on that front.
He also mentioned past and upcoming technical conferences convened by the commission to better understand whether any FERC policies are creating barriers for certain infrastructure development, including offshore wind and hybrid resources that collocate generation and storage.
Elections
Asked about the upcoming elections, Chatterjee said he did not see the results posing challenges to regulators, particularly given the independent, bipartisan nature of FERC.
Washington observers have noted that the power sector could see a drastic shift in energy and climate policy if presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden were to defeat President Donald Trump.
"As regulators, it's important to provide that stability and consistency because for the regulated community, for consumers, for investors, having rapid pendulum swings back and forth is very disruptive," Chatterjee said.
"I do think that should there be a change in the elections, the direction of the commission may slightly change under new leadership, but I don't expect it to be a dramatic shift," he added. "Similarly, as the commission under my leadership maybe has gone in a slightly different direction than my predecessors, it's not a dramatically different direction, and I think that's what's important about having independent, bipartisan agencies like FERC."
