The ramifications of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory are going to be bigger elsewhere, but FERC and the industries it regulates will see their share. 

Independent regulatory agencies are never at the top of campaign debates, and it is unclear how much Trump will pull from the plans the Heritage Foundation made for him in the so-called Project 2025, which included changes proposed for the commission by former Trump FERC appointee Bernard McNamee. (See Plan for GOP President: Cut Climate Programs, Re-Examine RTOs.) 

FERC is partisan by design, with members appointed from both parties by the president. This article is focused on Republican appointees, since they will be setting the tone for the next few years. “I think people are feeling that they’re being treated inequitably,” said former FERC Commissioner Nora Mead Brownell. “I think the economic divide grows wider, and I think that gave people a reason to ignore the [misogynistic], racist comments and buy into a promise that we know from the previous administration will never come to be. And on the flip side, Biden stayed too long, and I don’t think that they ever got their economic message out sufficiently. That’s what people cared about.” 

Brownell was appointed to FERC by President George W. Bush, but she is no fan of Trump and spoke to us from London, where she went to escape the elections. She said the results are “mind boggling.” 

One of the biggest questions facing the agency is whom Trump will pick for chair. It has a full slate of commissioners with two Republicans: Mark Christie and Lindsay See. Sources favor See, but the question remains open. 

Another key question for the future composition of FERC is whether Chair Willie Phillips will step down once the gavel is taken away from him, opening a seat for Trump to fill. Chairs tend to leave after a demotion, but Cheryl LaFleur did not, so there is precedent for Phillips remaining. FERC did not respond Nov. 6 to questions about Phillips’ future. 

“They could appoint a chairman, and they could try and steer away from power markets,” Brownell said. 

Utilities, however, have benefited from organized markets, so that would run into opposition, but FERC can exert significant control over the RTOs, and a new commission might try to expand to help the new administration’s policy priorities, she added. It is unclear which way that will go because in a two-party system, the Republicans still have plenty of internal policy debates, she said, adding that she wonders whether traditional GOP “conservatives” or “Trumpers” will win out. 

Brownell put R Street Institute in the former category and its Director of Energy & Environmental Policy Devin Hartmann, a former FERC staffer, told us a lot of the future depends on Phillips’ decision and the makeup of the Senate.  

“There’s a few things that I think that Chairman Phillips has worked on that he wants to see through, and so I’m curious to see if he wants to sort of realize that his legacy could still be executed by sticking around,” Hartmann said. 

That would be a new situation for FERC with a majority of the party not in the White House until Phillips’ term expires in 2026. When it comes to the Senate, whether the GOP’s majority stays in the low 50s or reaches in the mid-50s would have implications for how easily Trump appointees can be confirmed, Hartmann said. 

A narrow majority would give the most moderate Republicans on the Energy & Natural Resources Committee, like Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), more sway, while a wider margin would allow more conservative voices to take on that role. Hartmann pointed to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) as an important voice with a larger majority. 

“Senator Lee is a very principled conservative, and while some of the rhetoric on FERC specifically has raised eyebrows, he really believes in executing its role fairly and not favoring certain industries,” Hartmann said. 

That has been demonstrated in some of the debates around permitting reform where Lee did not want to carve out policies that favor oil and gas exclusively, favoring technology-neutral approaches instead, he added. 

Cato Institute Director of Energy and Environmental Policy Studies Travis Fisher said his think tank aims to be bipartisan, but his experience includes working on Commissioner McNamee’s personal staff and being the lead author of the Department of Energy’s 2017 Staff Report to the Secretary on Electricity Markets and Reliability. (See FERC’s Independence to be Tested by DOE NOPR.) 

“From my point of view, the odds of getting good free market policy out of the [Democratic] Party — that seems slim,” Fiser said. “So, I’m optimistic that we might have generally more free market policy. But of course, there’s things to not like about each party.” 

One campaign promise Trump made that implicates FERC is to cut utility bills in half, and one way the commission could try to address affordability is to investigate why years of low wholesale power prices, driven by cheap natural gas, have not lowered bills for retail consumers. 

“I’ve put in a few filings at FERC, but you know, it’s one thing to say you’re creating savings at the wholesale level, but they have not really shown how that passes through to actual savings for people paying retail bills,” Fisher said. “And I suspect the crossover between federal and state jurisdiction is going to get a little bit more scrutiny.” 

One issue we brought up with everyone was whether the second Trump administration would try to put its thumb on the scale for coal, as it did with a notice of proposed rulemaking Energy Secretary Rick Perry filed with Fisher’s involvement. He said he doubted that would happen again but declined to discuss it in detail. 

That effort was rejected unanimously by FERC, including three of his appointees — then-Chair Kevin McIntyre and Commissioners Robert Powelson and Neil Chatterjee. Whether the agency gets independent-minded commissioners under Trump depends on who is nominated, Fisher said. 

The Fate of Transmission Reform

A focus of FERC under President Joe Biden has been to reform transmission planning, which led to Order 1920. That was passed along partisan lines of the three-member commission this summer, with Commissioner Christie arguing that the Democrats were favoring the growth of wind and solar above other concerns. 

The majority on the House Energy & Natural Resources Committee made its views known, sending letters to FERC and other agencies to stop any “partisan” policymaking.  

“The results of the 2024 presidential election are now apparent, and leadership of … FERC will soon change,” House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) wrote. “As a traditional part of the peaceful transfer of power, FERC should immediately stop work on any partisan or controversial item under consideration, consistent with applicable law and regulation. There are many bipartisan, consensus items that FERC could pursue to fulfill its mission before the end of your tenure. I urge you to focus your attention on these matters.” 

Grid Strategies President Rob Gramlich has been one of the biggest supporters of Order 1920 and he argued the rule still would benefit Trump’s agenda, which is heavy on expanding cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence. 

“I think the tech investors and executives are really going to want to see a grid expanded to accommodate power demand growth,” Gramlich said. “And, of course, power demand growth is a key part of Order 1920.” 

FERC could still issue its rehearing order on the rule in the next couple of months, but the change in leadership has implications for how the rule will be implemented and will likely mean a “retreat” from Biden-era policies, he added. 

A big part of the future of transmission reform depends on where Commissioner See comes down, said R Street’s Hartmann. While a lot of the political discourse around the rule has pitted it as trampling states’ rights (one of her top issues), the technical aspects of its changes have been embraced by state commissioners. 

“I think the big question mark will be whether she can decipher the technical merits of Order 1920 from some of the political posturing that we’ve seen from certain states and recognize that actually the states that have been more engaged on transmission issues really do respect the core aspects of Order 1920,” he added. 

Fisher said he was not against expanding the grid as needed, but he doubted it would remain a priority under Trump. 

“We should be candid that the grid might need some transmission, but really the need and the main cause for new transmission is wind and solar, especially wind,” Fisher said. 

If you can characterize transmission expansion as a low-cost option for meeting new demand, then it will get some focus, but FERC will not be mandating grid planning to enable the energy transition or universalizing the costs of state clean energy and climate policies, he added. Arguments about needing to expand the grid to ensure reliability going forward are overblown, he said. 

“It seemed to me to be sort of a false front, that it was just a reason to try to get the right-of-center on board with building more transmission,” Fisher said. 

The Election’s Impact on Resource Adequacy Issues

Reliability is likely to going to be a common theme at FERC under Trump, as it has been under Chair Phillips. There may be differences in how to get there  

President Trump will terminate EPA’s power plant rule, which Fisher noted drew concerned comments from some of the organized markets over its implementation. (See RTOs Seek More Flexible Compliance in Appeal of Power Plant Rule.) 

The end of the power plant rule means that states will not be forced to shut down existing dispatchable generation too early, said Competitive Enterprise Institute Research Fellow Paige Lambert. Coal will not be making a comeback due to cheap shale gas, regardless of Trump’s policy priorities, but the new administration means existing plants will run longer. 

“The focus there really should be on not prematurely closing any existing capacity that we have because prematurely closing reliable capacity like the power plant rule was going to do is going to really undermine reliability in a pretty damaging way,” Lambert said. 

While keeping more coal and natural gas units will add more supply to the resource adequacy equation, the change in policies from the election can also have an impact there. 

MISO did not want to weigh in deeply on the election, as it strives to be nonpartisan, but during a Nov. 6 Resource Adequacy Subcommittee meeting, Director of Strategic Initiatives and Assessments Jordan Bakke briefly invoked the results when discussing the upcoming Regional Resource Assessment, which attempts to project MISO’s resource profile and capacity needs over the next 20 years. He said the differing policies of presidential administrations complicate a clear view of the future generation mix. 

“That and a lot of other things are making [members’] resource planning more challenging,” Bakke said.  

Amanda Durish Cook contributed to this article.