President Donald Trump plans to elevate a Democratic member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to full chair as many continue to raise questions about the agency’s independence.
David Rosner — a centrist Democrat — will take over the position from former Chair Mark Christie, a Republican, who departed the agency on Friday after only six months as chair. The move was first reported by Axios and confirmed by POLITICO.
The agency now sits at a 2-1 Democratic majority under Rosner, with Trump planning to fill the last two spots with Republican nominees: White House adviser David LaCerte and energy attorney Laura Swett. They still await Senate confirmation.
The appointments come as the agency faces unique challenges to address booming power demand from artificial intelligence data centers. The Trump administration has supported baseload generation sources, like fossil fuels and nuclear, to address such demand, while acting to marginalize more variable sources, like wind and solar.
Rosner, who was confirmed to the agency in 2024 under President Joe Biden, has supported efforts to address the power demand issue by strengthening the reliability of the electric grid through an “all-of-the-above” energy philosophy. He believes all kinds of energy generation and energy infrastructure, including expanded transmission planning and increased build-out of natural gas pipelines, should be utilized to address the issue.
Before his tenure as commissioner, he was an energy analyst for the agency and later was hired by then-Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.).
Some environmental groups, like Friends of the Earth, criticized his support for natural gas at the time of his nomination, adding that such policies were not in line with the climate goals of the Biden administration.
Rosner will also have to face growing concerns that the agency may be losing its regulatory independence under the Trump administration. Trump has signed executive orders seeking to bring FERC and other agencies overseeing big business under White House control, and pushed out Democratic former Chair Willie Phillips before the end of his tenure for reasons that remain unclear.
Christie, for his part, had voiced support in principle for the administration’s goals to increase energy supply while reiterating the necessity to adhere to the law. He acknowledged the growing concern over executive control across agencies in a recent interview with POLITICO’s E&E News.
“If a chief executive can fire members of a commission, it’s not independent,” Christie said. “The ability to be fired is the dividing line.”
Rosner’s energy record
Since joining the commission in June 2024, Rosner has steered his attention to the challenge of absorbing electricity demand from the tech industry’s multi-gigawatt-size data centers. For FERC, questions came up about federal rules around co-locating power plants and data centers — a practice that would affect regional electric grids that serve big swaths of the country.
“We’ve got to figure out a way to unlock the efficiency of co-located load in generation,” Rosner said at a conference in November.
And he’s grown increasingly concerned about the wait time for electricity projects looking to tie into major regional grids. He’s pushed for greater automation to speed the engineering process.
“Getting grid interconnection moving faster is essential to ensuring reliability,” Rosner told POLITICO’s E&E News in March. “We’re starting to learn about these new tools and platforms that just make this work faster, smarter, saves us time, solves the reliability and affordability problems that are facing the country.”
Rosner has also supported efforts to ensure states aren’t left on the sidelines during a period of rising energy demand. Rosner voted to boost the role of state regulators in planning major power grid expansions — an issue that had dogged Phillips.
FERC’s Order 1920, adopted with the support of only Democratic commissioners before Rosner joined the commission, requires that regional grid operators plan 20 years into the future for the high-voltage transmission needs. In addition, FERC directed that grid operators and states determine the allocation of costs for building long-distance lines.
Critics, including Christie, felt that ratepayers could be saddled with the high costs of building transmission for the purpose of helping adjoining states meet renewable energy goals.
“We heard the states loud and clear, and we want to be responsive to them,” Rosner said at the time.
Rosner has joined Christie to build on FERC’s outreach to states by encouraging states in the West to collaborate on efforts to create organized electricity markets outside of California.
Joel Kirkland contributed reporting.
