Industry-Friendly Appointments Change the Playing Field for Federal Solar Policy

The following is an excerpt from our report, Blocking the Sun: Utilities and Fossil Fuel Interests That Are Undermining American Solar Power. Interested in reading more? Click here.

Electric utilities and other special interests looking to slow the growth of rooftop solar have primarily focused on influencing state-level policy by affecting the outcomes of regulatory proceedings to favor utilities over rooftop solar. Others have sought state-level changes using campaign contributions to statehouse politicians and involvement in local ballot initiatives. However, under the Trump administration, political appointments of longtime utility and fossil fuel industry allies to federal government roles related to the development of renewable energy policy may present an opportunity for special interests to slow the progress of rooftop solar at the federal level.

The presence of anti-solar interests started as early as President Trump’s transition team. Thomas Pyle, president of the Koch-funded Institute for Energy Research and former Koch lobbyist in D.C., led the Department of Energy transition. Doug Domenech, a director at the Texas Public Policy Foundation — which has received Koch funding and worked against state renewable portfolio standards — headed up the Department of the Interior transition. And Myron Ebell, director of the Center for Energy and Environment at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, another Koch-funded group, which has openly lobbied Congress to end a federal program that helps fund net metering programs for those with rooftop solar panels, led the Environmental Protection Agency transition.

Administrative appointments have continued the trend. In May, President Trump appointed the former vice president for policy at the Institute for Energy Research, Daniel Simmons, to oversee the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. The agency’s primary purpose is to encourage the development of renewable energy technology, and was targeted by the Institute for Energy Research’s advocacy arm in 2015, which called on Congress to dismantle the agency altogether.

In August, Mark Menezes, the current Vice President of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which owns utilities PacifiCorp and NV Energy, was nominated to become the Under Secretary of Energy. Menezes has a long history of lobbying for electric utilities and trade groups, including Duke Energy and the Edison Electric Institute.

That same month, Neil Chatterjee was confirmed for a seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency that provides regulatory guidance on many facets of energy policy, including electricity transmission rules that can affect state net metering policies. Chatterjee once served as a federal lobbyist for the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, a trade group that later supported the Florida anti-solar initiative Amendment 1 and has advocated for other anti-solar policies such as monthly fixed fees for rooftop solar customers and applying lower, wholesale rates for net metering instead of retail rates.

In October, President Trump nominated Kathleen Hartnett-White to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality. Hartnett-White, like Trump’s transition lead for the Department of the Interior, Doug Domenech, is also an alumna of the Texas Public Policy Foundation and co-authored the think tank’s book Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War on Energy, which argues against shifts from oil and gas to renewable energy sources.

Secretary of Energy Rick Perry appointed Brian McCormack, a former Edison Electric Institute executive who served as the vice president of political and external affairs for the utility group, to serve as his chief of staff. McCormack oversaw the writing of a Department of Energy report released in August 2017 on the effects of renewable energy on the electric grid; one of the report’s authors, Travis Fisher, once served as an economist for the Institute for Energy Research, and his 2015 report for the Institute named clean energy policies the greatest threat to the electric grid above such specters as cyberattacks and terrorism.

The new positioning of electric utilities to influence policy on a federal level warrants vigilance and strong policies in the states to ensure rooftop solar continues to have a bright future.