Mark Christie, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, left the post Friday after just over six months at the helm, marking a brief tenure that saw warnings of power shortages before the end of the decade and threats to FERC’s political independence.
After President Donald Trump named him chair on Jan. 20, Christie entered the fray as a like-minded critic of Democratic policies: Coal plant closures were ill-conceived, wind and solar power weren’t reliable, and climate policy was the wrong thing for regulators to focus on, Christie said.
Before and after he became chair, Christie maintained a stubborn, almost evangelical belief in the states, arguing they’re better suited than federal regulators to chart the path for a nation that now requires more electricity and for consumers who may pay higher costs.
The veteran regulator from Virginia issued a famously scathing rebuke of former Chair Willie Phillips’ major policy effort, which sought to bring more federal order to the nation’s interstate grid planning process. Christie framed it as an effort to force a left-leaning clean energy agenda on politically conservative states.
But even as Christie hit the same notes as Trump, he could be out of step with the White House on questions of executive power over the agency. In an interview with POLITICO’s E&E News, Christie embraced a characterization from Albert Pollard, a former state lawmaker in Virginia, who said of Christie, “He’s no shrinking violet.”
When the Trump administration demanded that workers justify their jobs, Christie stepped in, writing a weekly letter on behalf of the entire agency instead of staff sending individual emails. Christie thinks the letters attest to the incredible work ethic of the agency, which publishes roughly three orders a day.
A White House official told POLITICO on Friday that Trump intends to elevate FERC Commissioner David Rosner to the role of chair. Rosner is a Biden-era Democratic appointee to the commission. Christie’s departure leaves FERC with a 2-1 Democratic majority. Trump has nominated White House adviser David LaCerte and energy attorney Laura Swett to the commission, awaiting Senate approval.
‘No longer on the horizon’
If there is one policy issue that defined Christie’s time at FERC — which began as a Republican commissioner in 2021 — it is grid reliability.
Christie became chair as the electricity and natural gas industries watched projected demand growth skyrocket. Tech giants planning massive artificial intelligence data centers from Ohio to Arizona changed the landscape for a utility business that had seen almost flat growth for decades.
In the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, and for dominant utilities in the South and West, the projected gap between supply and demand tightened considerably. AI training and cloud computing demands are expected to push electricity loads into uncharted territory.
“The horizon is no longer on the horizon,” Christie said. “It’s across the street. It’s here now.”
He traces the problem to a basic imbalance: retiring too much dispatchable generation — coal and gas plants — while failing to build enough new resources to replace them, especially in the PJM Interconnection, the sprawling grid serving the mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes regions.
“Dominion alone has 40 gigawatts of data center load sitting in its interconnection queue,” Christie noted, referring to the Virginia utility. “That’s a quarter of PJM’s entire peak.”
Christie said the sudden demand spike is breaking the assumptions behind traditional resource adequacy planning. With market incentives for new generation flagging, Christie sees a new model emerging — one driven by the tech sector’s need for near-perfect reliability.
“I call it BYOG — bring your own generation,” he said.
Rather than relying on markets to secure future electricity capacity, Amazon, Microsoft and others are striking power purchase agreements and investing directly in electric generation.
This trend, Christie warned, will intensify as data centers running AI programs require “10 to 15 times” the power of traditional cloud computing hubs. But it raises a crucial question: Who pays?
“The two most important questions in utility regulation are who pays and who profits,” Christie said. “States are going to have to grapple with how to allocate the costs.”
He pointed to Dominion’s pending request in Virginia to create a new customer class for data centers as a possible national bellwether. Such classes get power at different rates as a way to allocate a utility’s total costs and often include residential, commercial, or industrial users.
If Christie had a major disappointment, it wasn’t the brevity of his tenure but the commission’s inaction on transmission costs. “Transmission costs are now reaching the point of being the primary driver of people’s monthly bills,” he said. “FERC has failed to address them.”
Despite his efforts, Christie said he was unable to secure the necessary three votes to reform policies such as return-on-equity adders or formula rate presumptions.
He blamed “tremendous lobbying by the transmission owner industry,” which he said has little incentive to give up the generous financial terms they enjoy under current rules.
FERC independence
Christie recounted learning of his elevation to chair in a call from a Trump transition official while watching football at a cigar bar outside Richmond, Virginia. There were no demands, no preconditions — just a simple ask: Would he accept the appointment?
He did. And from his first press conference, Christie signaled he would be a more communicative chair, eager to consult with both federal and state energy policymakers.
He emphasized his relationship with Peter Lake, a former Texas utility regulator now working at the White House National Energy Dominance Council.
“They’ve been very appreciative to hear what we’re doing,” Christie said, stressing that no person from the administration attempted to interfere in pending cases. “It’s been what I wanted it to be.”
Previous FERC chairs have emphasized the rarity of FERC-White House communications. Jon Wellinghoff, who served under President Barack Obama, said he never got one phone call from the White House other than an initial introduction. Former Chair Richard Glick had regular meetings with a White House climate adviser under the Biden administration.
As Trump pushed out executive orders seeking to bring FERC and other agencies overseeing big business under White House control, Christie voiced support in principle for the administration’s goals while reiterating the necessity to adhere to the law. In response to an order to automatically repeal certain regulations unless they were renewed by the commission, Christie said the administration was right to seek a regulatory house cleaning. Yet he said the specifics of the order needed further scrutiny.
“Everything we do — whether it’s a rescission, whether it’s putting a sunset provision on it — has to be done in accordance with law. Otherwise, you’re just spinning your wheels,” Christie said in an April press briefing, warning that skipping proper procedures would almost certainly lead to reversals in federal court.
Christie declined to speculate on whether FERC will become more politicized, but he acknowledged growing concerns about executive overreach across independent agencies. “If a chief executive can fire members of a commission, it’s not independent,” he said. “The ability to be fired is the dividing line.”
Ultimately, Christie said, FERC’s fate may rest with the Supreme Court, which is considering a case testing the president’s ability to remove commissioners without cause. The White House asked Phillips, the chair under Biden, to resign earlier this year, and Phillips agreed to. At other agencies, like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Trump has ordered commissioners dismissed.
Christie’s “gold standard for an independent agency” is his former employer, the Virginia State Corporation Commission.
“It’s done a wonderful job for 100-some years because it’s independent, because the governor doesn’t appoint, the governor can’t fire — and, frankly, no one can. The Legislature [could choose not to reelect] you every six years, but that’s it,” Christie said.
Yet Christie said the administration’s move to eliminate agency independence could have benefits. He said the current system is “an insider’s game” dominated by special interests that can afford lobbyists. Making FERC more beholden to an elected president, he said, might push the agency to prioritize the general public.
