New FERC Chairman Talks Electric Bills, Energy Demand and the Mountain Valley Pipeline

 

 

January 31, 2025 - While he’s spent years as a government regulator deeply immersed in decisions that affect people’s electric and gas bills, Mark Christie says his upbringing in coal country gave him a perspective he never forgets.  

Christie was a product of Welch, West Virginia, public schools and worked a summer job as a coal miner to help pay for college. His father sold cars to coal miners to put food on the table.

Christie was named chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Jan. 20, the first day of President Donald Trump’s second term. Christie joined the five-member nonpartisan, independent commission in 2021 and is one of its two Republican members.

Before joining FERC, Christie served on the Virginia State Corporation Commission for about 17 years. He estimates he was involved in more than 17,000 cases that came before the state agency that regulates banking, insurance and utilities.

While Virginia’s SCC regulates utilities within the borders of the commonwealth, FERC regulates the transmission of electricity, natural gas and oil when it crosses state lines. It also regulates the construction of interstate natural gas pipelines such as the Mountain Valley Pipeline.

Christie earned a law degree from Georgetown University and served as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He taught regulatory law for a decade at the University of Virginia School of Law and constitutional law and government for 20 years at Virginia Commonwealth University.   

Christie recently spoke with Cardinal News about how FERC’s work affects the public and what can be done about challenges such as rising electricity demand. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Question: What is the most common misconception you encounter where people think FERC is responsible for something but it actually isn’t?

Answer: I think most people in America have never heard of FERC. Let’s start with that. Because it’s not a well-known federal agency. It’s a very small federal agency, and most people don’t know what FERC means or what FERC stands for.

When I was on the Virginia State Corporation Commission for 17 years, and I’d go around Virginia, and friends and family, and go to weddings or events, around football games, and people would say, “What do you do?” And I’d say, “Well, I work at the State Corporation Commission.” And the most common answer was, “Well, what does that do?”

So, I think most people don’t really know what these alphabet government agencies do. But to the extent people are even aware of FERC, I think they think that FERC sets their monthly power bill, and we do not do that. That is set by your state regulator, which I was for 17 years at the Virginia State Corporation Commission.

So, FERC doesn’t set your monthly power bill. Now, what FERC does can affect it. There’s no question about it. And I’ve been very vocal about making sure that FERC doesn’t do anything to drive it up unnecessarily.

Question: You mentioned that some things that FERC does can affect those rates. What are some examples of that?

Answer: FERC, for example, does set transmission rates, because transmission is considered to be interstate, because the electric grid obviously doesn’t stop at a state line; electrons don’t stop at a state line.

Transmission has long been thought to be interstate in nature, and so FERC sets interstate rates, and these will eventually — eventually — flow through to your retail power bill.

That’s something FERC has authority over, and I’ve been very vocal about we need to make sure those transmission rates are not excessive and those transmission costs are not driving up people’s bills too much because they will flow through into the monthly bills.

Question: The demand for electricity is rising across the country, and especially in Virginia, largely thanks to data centers and artificial intelligence. How should this rising demand be addressed, and what is FERC’s role in addressing it?

Answer: Virginia, as everybody is starting to figure out, we are ground zero for development of data centers in the world — not just in the United States, but in the world.

We have more data center capacity right here in Virginia than anywhere in the world. And those data centers, to be simple about it, they take a ton of power. 

And that power has to be supplied, and you can only supply power from generation.

And so what’s happening in Virginia, because we are ground zero for the data center explosion, is we’re running into problems with not having enough generation in Virginia to feed this growth in data centers.

Now, let me be clear: If a customer wants to hook into a utility, whether it’s Appalachian [Power] out in western Virginia or whether it’s Dominion [Energy] in eastern Virginia or one of our many co-ops, if a customer wants to connect to the utility, we have to serve that customer. I mean, that’s just part of utility principle.

[Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy.]

But the issue is, how do you spread the cost of that?

If a customer causes a new generation unit to be needed, more than one or two generation units to be needed, the issue in regulation is, how do you spread the cost that’s being caused by that big power-using data center? How do we spread the cost of the new generation that we’re going to build and the new transmission that we’re going to need? How should that cost be allocated?

That’s the big issue that Virginia is going to face. We’re already facing it right now.

Question: When it comes to shaping this energy landscape, how much influence does government regulation have compared to market forces?

Answer: The electric industry is very heavily regulated. It always has been, going back over 100 years.

People in Roanoke are signed up with Appalachian Power Company. People in Richmond, my area, are signed up with Dominion. You don’t have a choice. You have a monopoly provider.

And that’s because the economics of the electric grid really lend themselves to, you’re going to have a more efficient system if you have only one provider.

Well, that’s the monopoly, and so it has to be regulated. The economics really ties into the regulation.

Historically in America, we’ve regulated the rates of utilities because they are monopolies and they’re natural monopolies. You’re not going to get competing utilities, and nobody wants to see 10 different power lines come down their street, right? You’re going to see 10 different power lines for 10 different utilities. It’s just not going to work.

So it’s always been a monopoly industry, and that’s why it’s always been regulated by the states, primarily.

Question: One of FERC’s duties is to regulate the construction of interstate natural gas pipelines. In Southwest and Southside Virginia, that responsibility was in the spotlight over the past 10 years as the Mountain Valley Pipeline was planned and built. What was FERC’s role regarding MVP, and specifically how did the agency weigh the goals of developing the pipeline against the opposition to the project?

Answer: In America, if a pipeline is within a state border, then it’s under the state regulator.

And, as a Virginia regulator, we had several projects that came to us for approval — or disapproval as the case may be — but they were confined to within the Virginia border.

What FERC does is, it’s sort of like transmission. If a pipeline crosses the state border — and of course Mountain Valley Pipeline crossed the state border, West Virginia into Virginia — then it’s under FERC jurisdiction.

There’s a federal law called the Natural Gas Act, which Congress passed and we have to follow it.

The Natural Gas Act says if you want to build an interstate pipeline, a pipeline across state lines, you have to go to this agency called FERC and you have to get what’s called a certificate of public convenience and necessity, a CPCN.

And the Natural Gas Act is very clear about if the applicant who wants to build the pipeline meets certain legal standards, then FERC shall approve the pipeline. FERC shall approve the pipeline if the applicant meets these standards.

So MVP or any other pipeline, if they come in and they apply and they meet the standards under the Natural Gas Act, then the Natural Gas Act tells FERC, “You shall approve the application.” It’s that simple.

Now, I know some people are opposed to pipelines, and there’s obviously opposition to MVP, and I was well aware of that, being a Virginian.

But at the end of the day, the Supreme Court of the United States has said that the principal purpose of the Natural Gas Act is to develop the nation’s natural gas resources. That’s the principal purpose.

I’ve talked to opponents. I’ve met with opponents. I’m pretty much open-door. I’ve met with opponents, and I’ve said to them — not MVP but I mean for all pipelines; they’re just opposed to pipelines — and I’ve said, “Look, the statute was written by Congress. The statute was passed by Congress. We have to apply the statute. If you want to ban pipelines, or you don’t want pipelines to be built anywhere that carry gas” — and a lot of them do not want pipelines that carry gas or oil — “you’ve got to go to Congress and get the law changed because we have to carry out the law.”

Question: How do you balance meeting energy demand with climate concerns?

Answer: We’re an economic regulator and an energy regulator. We’re not an environmental regulator — that’s EPA [the Environmental Protection Agency].

Now, we do have an environmental duty under a statute called the National Environmental Policy Act.

What NEPA does is say to every agency in the federal government — it’s not just us — that before you approve a physical piece of infrastructure — and this could be a road, a bridge, an airport, a seaport, anything the federal government might fund — you have to do what’s called a NEPA analysis, which is an environmental impact analysis.

FERC complies with that. Now, NEPA does not explicitly say to FERC, “Before you approve a pipeline, you have to do a global climate impact.” It does not say that.

NEPA really is about, what are the impacts from the pipeline itself? Does it cause stream runoff? Does it cause soil subsidence? Does it cause noise in the construction? It’s really about issues that take place during the construction of the facility or more long-term.

FERC does not have the authority and doesn’t have the statutory directive to say with a pipeline, is this going to affect global climate change?

Because global climate change is global, obviously, right? There’s no separate climate for western Virginia. There’s no separate climate for eastern Virginia. There’s no separate climate for Virginia or even the United States. There is just the climate, and it is global.

FERC’s job in doing a NEPA analysis, it has no way to determine what impact this particular pipeline is going to have on the entire globe. It doesn’t have that expertise.

Question: Energy policy can be very politicized. Opinions are often divided along partisan lines. How does FERC, as an independent agency, work within that political environment?

Answer: What we have to do is always remember — and I’ve tried to do this ever since I was a Virginia regulator — the people you’re out there working for are the public. 

Seventeen years on the Virginia commission, I always kept in mind I’m working for the Virginia public, the public interest in Virginia. Not special interests — the Virginia public.

I’ve got the same attitude at FERC. I’m working for the public, for the people who have to pay their monthly bills and need reliable power. And that’s what you do.

And fortunately, the whole time I was on the Virginia commission, my two colleagues had the same attitude: We’re here working for the public. We’re not working for a party. We’re not working for a partisan interest. We’re here working for the public, and that was the case in the 17 years I was on the Virginia commission. 

And I’m very pleased right now on FERC we’ve got four other commissioners and everybody’s also dedicated to the public. It’s not about trying to push a partisan agenda or something like that.

Question: How did your time on the SCC prepare you for your work with FERC?

Answer: Tremendously invaluable. I spent 17 years on the Virginia commission, which to me is the gold standard for a state agency in all of America. The Virginia State Corporation Commission is a crown jewel of Virginia government.

The SCC is incredibly valuable and important to the Virginia business community, to the business climate that we have, and to everyday consumers.

The Virginia SCC regulates not only electric rates; it regulates banking, it regulates insurance, it regulates the securities industry.

The Virginia SCC is so valuable to Virginians, and most people don’t know what it does. I understand that. I do understand that, because most people just go about their lives.

But how did it prepare me to go on FERC? It was tremendously valuable. When you spend 17 years in the trenches, learning all the details about electric regulation — obviously that gave me a tremendous background and education in this whole electric regulation area.

So when I came to FERC, I was coming basically from the front line, because that’s where state regulators are — they’re on the front line.