As the World Heats up, FERC Cools Regulations
Report and photo by Phil Pasquini
Washington, DC
For the past 10 years a group of resolute environmental activists from Beyond Extreme Energy, Third Act. and others have been attending and protesting at the monthly public meetings of FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission). Each month the climate change activists stand vigilant outside the Commissions FERC headquarters building before each meeting, protesting, picketing, and greeting attendees, calling their attention to concerns and informing passersby on how the commissions decisions exacerbate the global climate crisis.
FERC is tasked with approving and regulating the interstate delivery of natural gas, oil, hydroelectricity, and electrical energy along with the safety and environmental impact of this critical infrastructure.
This month’s meeting was significant in that it was the last under the Biden administration. Trump, who has called for more fossil fuel development with his “Drill baby drill” mantra, is expected to embrace Project 2025’s realignment regarding FERC. The coal, nuclear, and natural gas-heavy proposals contained in the paper boldly state there is a need to “Refocus FERC on ensuring that customers have affordable and reliable electricity, natural gas, and oil and no longer allow it to favor special interests and progressive causes.”
One of the architects of the DOE and EPA portion of Project 2025 was former Trump appointee and DOE official, Bernard McNamee, and former chairman of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation, a Texas think tank, that has fought climate regulations. Interestingly too, the commission operates on a $565 million budget (2025) which it states is recovered in full “through annual charges and filing fees assessed on the industries it regulates.”
The commission’s monthly public meetings have been “ground zero” for activists in speaking out by attempting to disrupt the proceedings when voicing their concerns about the profound consequences and negative environmental impact of carbon-based fossil fuels. Once a person has been removed for disruption, they are banned for life from attending another meeting and are instead relegated to being escorted to an overspill room where they can watch the proceedings on a TV monitor. After the start of today’s meeting, the group of seven activists began chanting loudly in the hallway when they were ushered out of the building by armed guards.
Even without activists speaking out, the necessity of reducing climate change vectors was widely apparent this past week as fires consumed a substantial portion of Southern California due to the human-caused climate crisis. This overt display of destruction on such a massive scale alone should prompt the Commission to reexamine its role by taking positive and immediate action when regulating and approving energy projects that contribute to the indisputable evidence of the growing climate emergency.
Mainstream news coverage has failed, too, in its role of informing the public regarding the contributing conditions that have led up to the California fires by sidelining the subject. Instead, they have focused on the personal human tragedy of those who have suffered from its devastating effects.
According to NASA, global temperatures in 2024 reached a new “unprecedented heat streak” making it the warmest year on record since record-keeping began in 1880, toppling the previous record set in 2023. It just may have been “the hottest year in human history” is how the Economist referenced the upward record-breaking trend.
Climate change, too, is reflected in “100-year floods” now occurring with greater frequency and predicted to occur annually by the end of this century in many coastal communities as reported by the American Geophysical Union in 2023.
Demonstrators, today, pointed out that FERC staff and commissioners should follow the US District DC Court of Appeals decisions, telling them to “develop robust environmental justice and greenhouse gas emissions analysis of proposed new projects.” Last year, the court vacated two LNG (liquid natural gas) export facilities due to FERC’s “inadequate environmental assessments and the need for a more thorough analysis of climate and community impacts.”
The activists summed up the commission’s review process as being a “rubber stamp” for proposed projects and that the commission seldom reviews a project that it does not like.
Thinking forward, they admittedly would rather see FERC changed to FREC (Federal Renewable Energy Commission).
(Phil Pasquini is a freelance journalist and photographer. His reports and photographs appear in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Countercurrents, and Nuze.ink. He is the author of Domes, Arches and Minarets: A History of Islamic-Inspired Buildings in America.)
