A former Republican chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Tuesday warned against White House intrusions on the agency’s independence and stressed that meeting the U.S. tech industry’s massive electricity needs requires leaders to rethink partisan policy positions.
“We are about to face an unprecedented surge in demand,” said former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee, who served during the first Trump administration. “In order to meet that, I think both parties are going to have to kind of reevaluate their energy priorities.”
Much of the focus of POLITICO’s annual Energy Summit in Washington was on how to meet a huge projected increase in electricity demand tied to Silicon Valley’s expansion of computing power and data centers for artificial intelligence and for the needs of advanced manufacturing, electric cars, and home heating and cooling.
Chatterjee cautioned Republican and Democratic leaders against digging in their heels on either side of a debate about whether federal policy should emphasize fossil fuels for power generation or focus on bringing more wind and solar power onto the grid along with battery storage and energy efficiency.
