President Obama’s nominee to join the federal regulator that oversees the nation’s electricity grid cleared a Senate panel Thursday, and will head to the floor for a confirmation vote.
Colette Honorable won approval to join the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Honorable, a Democrat, is well-liked on both sides of the aisle. She most recently served as the head of the Arkansas Public Service Commission, and also was head of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners.
The full Senate is expected to OK Honorable’s nomination. It’s not clear when that vote will occur, as the Senate is supposed to leave for winter recess at the end of the week.
Honorable will be charged with overseeing a changing electric grid. Renewable energy has been increasing and power companies are shuttering coal-fired generators and switching to natural gas, two trends that Environmental Protection Agency regulations will accelerate.
Republicans and Democrats from coal-heavy states pressed Honorable to keep an eye on how EPA regulations might affect the availability of energy supplies. Those lawmakers are concerned forthcoming rules limiting mercury and carbon emissions from power plants could force coal-fired generation to stop, potentially leaving a shortage of electricity during periods of high demand.
Honorable, as head of the national association, has said she’s aware of those concerns in several areas of the country and that she has made it a top priority.
“At the national level, reliability was one of my top themes of work in this past year,” Honorable said at her Dec. 4 confirmation hearing. She later added, “Certainly, as president of NARUC I’ve overseen the collaborative effort going on with the state economic regulators and the commissioners at FERC to ensure that we’re working together through workshops on reliability, on gas-electric coordination, thinking about what the future might hold.”
