If former FERC Commissioner Bernard McNamee has his way, the next Republican president will eliminate the Department of Energy’s clean energy programs and lead the repeal of the two bills enacted under President Joe Biden to combat climate change. McNamee also would direct FERC to introduce “reliability pricing” in the wholesale electric markets.

McNamee offered his recommendations as part of the conservative Heritage Foundation’s recently published “Mandate for Leadership,” a book-length guide for incoming Republican presidents to reduce the size and scope of the federal government.

McNamee authored the chapter on DOE and its related agencies, which calls for the president to direct FERC to “re-examine the premise of RTOs.”

In an interview Aug. 1 with RTO Insider, McNamee did not deny climate change, but he also would not say what, if anything, a Republican successor to Biden should do. Instead he argued that the costs of the Inflation Reduction Act are out of proportion to its projected reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. He cited the Congressional Research Service’s report on the law that said the IRA could reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 32 to 40% by 2030 compared to 2005 levels; without it, the U.S. was already on a path to reducing emissions by 24 to 35%.

“So the issue is, what’s the cost-benefit to the American people [and] how do these programs impact energy security for the American people?” McNamee said.

In the forward to its most recent Mandate, its eighth, Heritage argues that “the long march of cultural Marxism through our institutions has come to pass. The federal government is a behemoth, weaponized against American citizens and conservative values, with freedom and liberty under siege as never before.”

In his chapter, McNamee argues that climate change policies are threatening U.S. energy security, creating an artificial scarcity crisis that is leading to unwarranted higher costs to consumers.

“Under the rubrics of ‘combating climate change’ and ‘ESG’ (environmental, social and governance), the Biden administration, Congress and various states — as well as Wall Street investors, international corporations and progressive special-interest groups — are changing America’s energy landscape,” he writes. “These ideologically driven policies are also directing huge amounts of money to favored interests and making America dependent on adversaries like China for energy.

“In the name of combating climate change, policies have been used to create an artificial energy scarcity that will require trillions of dollars in new investment, supported with taxpayer subsidies, to address a ‘problem’ that government and special interests themselves created.”

Instead, the department — which McNamee says should be renamed the Department of Energy Security and Advanced Science (DESAS) — should go back to focusing on the core missions it was created to complete, including cleaning up former Cold War nuclear material sites, working on “fundamental advanced science” and developing new nuclear weapons.

It should also prioritize studying cyber and other threats to the electric grid and pipeline networks and develop new technology to prevent disruptions, he argues.

To that end, McNamee calls for eliminating the offices of Clean Energy Demonstrations, State and Community Energy Programs, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, and Grid Deployment; the Loan Program Office; and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).

“ARPA-E is effectively funding projects that the private sector is unwilling to fund,” he writes. “Taxpayers should not in effect be picking winners and losers — and having their dollars at risk but not gaining the economic rewards of success. … The agency is unnecessary, risks taxpayer dollars and interferes with risk-benefit decisions that should be made by the private sector.”

Ending Green Subsidies

A nominee of former President Donald Trump, McNamee served on FERC from December 2018 to September 2020. Prior to that, he worked as DOE’s deputy general counsel for energy policy. In that role, he worked on the department’s Grid Resiliency Pricing Rule, a controversial Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would have directed FERC to order RTOs and ISOs to compensate the full operating costs of generators with 90 days of on-site fuel.

He was narrowly confirmed by the Senate, 50-49, with all Democrats in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.). (See Senate Confirms McNamee to FERC.) Manchin had initially supported the nomination but rescinded his approval when a video surfaced that showed McNamee criticizing renewable energy and questioning the science of climate change when he worked at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

In his interview, McNamee noted that China is the global leader in emissions and that its government this year approved 106 GW of new coal-fired capacity. “So, the issue is really about making sure the American people have reliable and affordable energy.”

McNamee writes that the administration should work with Congress to repeal the IRA and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, both of which he frames as intended to subsidize “renewable energy developers, their investors and special interests.”

“DOE should be focused on fundamental research and science,” McNamee told RTO Insider. The offices established by the laws, as well as ARPA-E, support technologies that have “been developed, but it’s hard to get financing from the private sector to bring it to market. … That’s not appropriate for taxpayers to be taking that risk, covering that burden, covering that potential loss, especially when we’re $32.6 trillion in debt. Let the private sector do it.”

FERC

Many of McNamee’s suggestions for FERC are familiar from when he was a commissioner and are similar to concerns made by current Republican Commissioners James Danly and Mark Christie.

“RTOs no longer seem to work for the benefit of the American people,” McNamee writes. “Marginal price auctions for energy are not ensuring the reliability of the grid and are not passing the full economic benefits of subsidized renewables on to customers. FERC needs to re-examine the RTOs under its jurisdiction to make sure that they procure reliable and affordable electricity for the benefit of the American people.”

States-subsidized renewable resources are jeopardizing reliability in RTO regions, so FERC should direct “RTOs to establish reliability pricing for eligible dispatchable generation resources or require intermittent resources to procure backup power for times when they are not available to operate,” he writes. “A grid that has access to dispatchable resources such as coal, nuclear and natural gas for generating power is inherently more reliable and resilient.”

Trump has pledged to rein in “out-of-control” independent agencies if he is returned to office and his allies have already drafted an executive order requiring agencies to submit actions to the White House for review, the New York Times reported last month. That pledge applies to FERC, according to The Washington Post.