How do you use humor to explain FERC’s work?
At a recent Energy Bar Association meeting, I gave a ‘FERC 101: Etiquette for Dealing with FERC’ speech on how to conduct meetings, how to make your points so they’ll be listened to, what to do and not do when you file with us in writing.
I realized that it could come across as a big fat lecture so I peppered it with anonymous examples of people who’d done the opposite of what I was recommending, sometimes in humorous ways. I really had important points and if it hadn’t been funny it would have been ‘school-marmy.’ People turn off if they feel they’re being hectored.
How do you prepare for speeches?
I don’t read off prepared remarks. Of course I follow the outline but in order to be effective you have to read the audience. It’s pretty easy to tell when people are hanging on your every word and when they’re checking their iPhones. And I don’t have a stump speech. If I’m going to California they have a very different situation right now than Oklahoma. Even between the time you get there and the time you wrote your speech you probably have had encounters that give you more information.
How does the loss of a Commissioner affect the work?
Commissioner Phil Moeller left in the fall — his term ended last year and he has not been replaced. And the other Republican on the commission, Tony Clark, announced at last month’s meeting that he won’t seek renomination so we could potentially be on a path to being down two.
For much of the time I’ve been here we’ve had four commissioners, however, including almost the entire time I was chairman. I think we have functioned effectively. The difficultly with four is that you can have a tie, which occurred once on an item that we had to act on while I was chairman. The Federal Power Act holds that if the commission is deadlocked, then the new rate goes into effect. That happened once in 2014, which was very unfortunate.
Now if you have three, which I’ve never experienced, I think you could have a different problem. Three is a quorum, but we do have some cases in which a commissioner is recused. Former state commissioners cannot work on things that they worked on when they were in their state, for example. So if we had a case like that when we had three we could just not be able to act on it. Beyond that, the commission is designed by statute to be bipartisan and have five people. If we went down to three at this point we would not be bipartisan. I think we are three great folks, but five heads are better than three!
Tell me about the protesters at FERC.
The protesting at FERC started about a year and a half ago and the way I look at it, I’m a government official and we are a public body and the public has a right to be there. But it is difficult to see people who are choosing to be dragged out of a room, because they do have ways to make their views known. But one of the ways they are choosing to do that is to protest.
People can file comments in our cases, they’re open to all. When we have applications for new pipelines, which is what most of the protesting is about, we have numerous scoping meetings out in the community. I’ve also met, here in the commission with ‘friends of this county,’ or ‘opponents of this pipeline,’ in a civil meeting and heard their points of view.
No one wants to think they are deeply upsetting people, but I recognize that things we are doing are sometimes controversial. A lot of the people who are protesting are, based what they say, extremely upset about things that are not in FERC’s jurisdiction, like the way gas is mined with hydraulic fracturing, but this is a public place where they can make those views known.
What was it like to have Order 745 challenged?
I was in an airport on May 23rd, 2014 when the D.C. Circuit Court vacated Order 745. I was changing planes. I said to my husband, ‘Take me to the most quiet part of this airport. I’m going to drop everything and read this I don’t care if I miss my plane.’ It was the middle of the day and we went to the international part of the airport, which was desolate, and we sat in those plastic chairs and internalized the document.
I did feel protective of it. I was chairman when we petitioned for cert and had cert granted. I was concerned about the implications for demand response because demand-side technologies have the potential to reduce customers’ rates, to help with reliability, help with environmental goals. I was also concerned with what a decision might say about the jurisdiction of the commission more generally. We are seeing more and more technologies that could play a role in the wholesale market, and the outcome of the Supreme Court case could affect those as well. I was delighted.
What was it like to watch the Court work through it?
That was the third time I’d been in the Supreme Court, including one other case that I’d worked on as a lawyer, although I didn’t argue it. It was different to sit there and hear them discussing things I was very involved in, to hear them talking about the net-benefits test from the bench, it was just surreal. Justice Elena Kagan delivered an extremely clear description of how the electric system works that you could hand to someone and say, ‘Here, read this and you’ll see what happens.’ Whoever worked on that, including her, did a very clear job explaining complicated material. It was delightful.
So did you celebrate?
Yes, I did. I went out to dinner with my husband. It was one of those snow days that shut everything down but I said, “We’re going out.” We went to Bourbon Steak at the Four Seasons because we thought a hotel will have people there and supplies of food. And it’s a pretty swanky place, not one of my regular ones. You have to celebrate the good things, because every job has hard things.
The chairman also held a little reception here, and allowed me to help host it, for the all the people at FERC who worked on the original order and all the people who worked on the Supreme Court case. The initial notice of proposed rulemaking started in 2009. That led to the rule, which led to the D.C. Circuit case, and to the Supreme Court case. So over that period of time a lot of people worked on it. I’m a big believer in celebrating and giving credit to the people who do the work.
What do you advise young people in the energy field?
I have a thing I say in speeches but I really mean it. In every generation there is something that’s really the big thing. In the ‘60s and it was the space program and rockets. Then it was computers and the cell phone revolution and biotech. Energy is cool now! We are on the front page of the newspaper; we’re getting really wonderful young people to come into the profession. I’ve been doing this my whole life and energy is finally cool! I really believe that and I think that for young people who are figuring out what they want to do, we’re always going to need energy. You can’t make it in China.
I boil down all my life advice into three things:
First, bloom where you’re planted. Be great at the job you are in, success comes from success. A lot of people think the job they are doing isn’t good enough for them, but I find the people who get the best next opportunities are those who focus on doing a good job in the role they’re in.
Second, don’t burn bridges. Especially now, nothing you do ever goes away. Keep in touch with as many people as you can. Those are the people you can learn from, that is the circle you have, as you continue in your career. No matter who you are, you have a network.
Third, life is a movie, not a snapshot. Women in particular tend to have a lot of chapters in their careers. I’ve certainly had ups and downs. I’ve had times when my career has been my top thing and times when it has taken a back seat to other parts of my life.
You can’t judge yourself from one moment. Women in particular also tend to be really hard on themselves and think, ‘Oh if I quit to have a baby I’ll never get back on track.’ People have to believe that’s not true. Careers have different shapes, and there are different trajectories at which to succeed.
I tell people to just believe in themselves as they go through it. It’s dangerous to make statements about women this or that, but I think women can be very self critical and we need them in this field and all the other fields. I think the energy field has historically been perceived as a difficult place for women because it tended to promote and reward people who have a technical or engineering background. It’s changing. With so much of energy depending on regulation and policy, we are seeing more and more leaders that come from the legal, regulatory, financial or the communications side. There’s more than one way to be smart.