Mark Christie urges amendments to Senate permitting bill

Former FERC Chairman Mark Christie wants the Senate to rewrite the transmission provisions of its permitting bill, SB 5653, which he says would let the commission order a power line built in any state.

In a Nov. 3 Utility Dive opinion piece, Christie wrote that the bill's genuine permitting reforms "hold a welcome potential to get needed infrastructure built faster." The transmission sections, he wrote, "are not permitting reforms at all."

For developers and the funds that finance transmission, FERC's siting reach decides whether a state rejection ends a project. The bill contains no geographic limits on FERC's permitting power, in Christie's reading, and would let the commission override a state's own decision on a project and the opposition of the residents directly affected. A line refused by a state regulator would keep a federal route to construction.

Congress has enacted backstop siting authority before, most recently in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, but limited FERC's reach to corridors the Department of Energy designated. Each corridor required a finding that the national interest demanded it, Christie wrote.

He frames the Senate draft as a break with the Federal Power Act's near-century-old division of labor: states hold authority over siting and permitting of the physical assets inside their borders, while FERC sets rates for interstate transmission service and wholesale power sales. SB 5653, in his reading, extends federal override "to every square inch of the country."

One part of the transmission title does draw his support: provisions that would require large-load customers to pay the full costs they impose on the grid. That question is already contested at FERC, where state regulators and Google objected to MISO's 120-day load study, as Private Infrastructure Daily previously reported.

Christie argues that targeted amendments can minimize "the most negative consequences of the permitting bill's overreaching provisions."

Christie chaired both FERC and the Virginia State Corporation Commission and now directs the William & Mary Law School Center for Energy Law and Policy. His argument runs through the transmission title rather than the bill's generation and generation-interconnection provisions, which he treats as the genuine reforms.