The Federal Agency With Surprising Power to Impact Climate Change Policy

David Roberts interviews Richard Glick, commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), and Matthew Christiansen, a FERC advisor, to discover more about the powers of the little-known branch of the U.S. government to sway federal climate change policy.

"FERC sits at the heart of the clean energy transition, overseeing two key areas of frequent conflict," explains Roberts to introduce the interview. "The first is bulk electricity — interstate transmission lines and regional wholesale power markets. The second is natural gas infrastructure; the agency licenses the siting and building of all new pipelines."

The interview ranges from a discussion about the success of FERC's climate change efforts so far (on pipelines, Glick says FERC is doing poorly), how FERC might expand its abilities to address climate change, the uneasy relationship between FERC and states, the regulation of distributed power, and more.

For more details on the subjects covered in the interview, and more, see also an article written by Rich Glick and Matthew Christiansen for theEnergy Law Review.