By Michael Brooks

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will have a vital role in implementing the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon emission rules but won’t take sides in ideological debates over the regulations, Chairman Cheryl LaFleur said last week.

“People both for and against the Clean Power Plan are looking to us to publicly validate their views,” LaFleur said during a National Press Club luncheon. “I’ve taken a pretty firm line that I don’t think that’s FERC’s role. FERC is not an environmental regulator. … But make no mistake, I think FERC will have an essential role to play as the Clean Power Plan and our response to climate change is implemented.”

LaFleur said state-by-state compliance with the regulations would be more complicated than a regional approach. Dispatching power based on a state’s portfolio needs, rather than the current least-cost model, would require FERC to change the way RTOs work to support the state plans, she said. “I think it’s going to be a lot more than tinkering around the edges.”

She called a regional approach “the obvious solution,” noting that the EPA gave “extra credit” for regional cooperation. LaFleur highlighted the success of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative but said that FERC will still have to work with states and RTOs to come to agreements and compromises about goals, saying the commission needed to be “an honest broker for discussion.”

“This is the kind of hard, boring, unsexy, technical, dirt-under-the-fingernails work that FERC does,” she said. “… We work on the unsexy underbelly of every energy issue.”

Under pressure from the new Republican majority in Congress, FERC has scheduled four technical conferences in February and March on the reliability impact of the EPA regulations. LaFleur said more sessions will probably be added due to the number of stakeholders who have asked to speak. The first conference will be held Feb. 19 at FERC headquarters.

Asked whether she was disappointed Congress hadn’t passed new major energy legislation recently, she said she doesn’t worry about what those on the Hill are doing or not doing.

“I live by the rules they’ve given us,” she said. “If they pass new legislation, I’ll live by that.”