Joseph Kelliher, Chair, Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Speaking to reporters following a meeting of the United States Energy Association (USEA), Joseph Kelliher, chair of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, warned against climate change legislation that might be good environmental policy but bad energy policy.

“I believe FERC as a rates agency has a duty to help policymakers find the right balance between environmental policy and energy policy,” Kelliher said.

Earlier this year, Kelliher abandoned his stance that environmental policy and energy policy exist in “two separate universes,” asserting that “we desperately need” to balance those policies in developing solutions.

“The fiction that they are separate universes and reserved for separate policymakers and separate discussions really has to end,” he asserted during the February 20 keynote session of the National Electricity Delivery Forum. “It is a tenable fiction in most areas, but it utterly fails, it utterly collapses when you look at climate change.”

NRECA senior regulatory counsel Rich Meyer welcomed FERC’s involvement in the debate over climate change. “Too few policymakers have failed to publicly recognize the critical linkage between climate change, energy prices and reliability,” Meyer observed, adding “it’s a good sign that a senior administration official such as Chairman Kelliher appreciates that climate change should not be addressed in isolation and proposes that FERC help connect climate change policy to energy policy.”

According to an account of the USEA interview in Power Daily, Kelliher warned that “while the US can take a sound and acceptable path to environmental and energy policy, there is also the possibility that it will take an approach that has recklessly flawed energy policy.”

“If we were to address climate change in a way that is fundamentally unsound energy policy, we will end up with very expensive and unreliable energy supplies and I think that jeopardizes the public’s support for taking action on climate change.”

Kelliher’s remarks echo concerns voiced by NRECA CEO Glenn English at the NRECA’s annual meeting. “A lot of our elected officials are focused on climate change in isolation.  We think that it has to be considered in a broader context of energy policy to be sustainable. If we don’t get it right, we could see a trainwreck:  brown outs and blackouts and much higher rates.  And if that happens and there is a backlash, the whole effort could be derailed.”

The approach outlined by Kelliher is consistent with the roadmap the Electric Power Research Institute.  Kelliher called for “significant funding for research, development and deployment of technologies, increased energy efficiency, more demand response and an overall decrease in power demands.”

Kelliher also said that the United States needs an even stronger grid to move wind energy from remote locations to load centers.

“Wind advocates have to realize that they are not going to be able to achieve their ambitious goals unless the transmission grid is significantly strengthened,” Kelliher said.