FERC in the Trump Administration

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) has played an important role in the Trump administration, rejecting a proposal from the Department of Energy to subsidize coal and nuclear plants and largely staying true to its independent roots. Recently, EPIC’s Steve Cicala, an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, got the chance to sit down with one of the agency’s past chairmen, Jon Wellinghoff. They talked about the NOPR decision, what makes FERC’s culture unique, and the changing dynamics underway for electric utilities as distributed generation becomes a more important part of the U.S. energy mix.