Dive Brief:
- President Donald Trump plans to nominate Senate aide Richard Glick to serve as a commissioner at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
- Glick currently serves as the Democratic General Counsel for the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
- FERC has been without a quorum for months, and Trump's nominees have been stalled in the Senate. The nomination of a Democrat to fill a seat may have been a concession to the opposition party.
Dive Insight:
FERC rules require no more than three commissioners be from one party, so it's not a total shock that President Trump would nominate someone from across the aisle. E&E News reported earlier this month that Glick's name had been floated.
Glick is now a Senate aide, but E&E notes he was a former lobbyist for the wind industry.
Glick was vice president of government affairs for Iberdrola's renewable energy, electric and gas utility, and natural gas storage businesses in the United States (Now Avangrid Renewables), and previously served as a director of government affairs for PPM Energy.
Before that, he was director of government affairs for PacifiCorp. From 1998 to 2001, Glick served as a policy advisor to Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources voted 20-3 on both Neil Chatterjee and Robert Powelson's nominations to serve as FERC commissioners. The five-member agency has lacked a quorum since Commissioner Norman Bay resigned at the end of January, but so far, the full Senate has not acted on the nominations.
The agency is currently operating with a skeleton crew, and it is about to get even more shorthanded. Commissioner Colette Honorable intends to step on Friday, wrapping up her term.
Without a quorum of three members, the commission cannot issue major orders and much of its business has been delegated to staff. In April, Acting Chair Cheryl LaFleur said the agency had gone from issuing 100 orders per month to about a quarter of that volume.
