“The oversight of utilities has been so lax and captured, frankly, that it is unbelievable what they are allowed to do with this bargain they struck. Yeah, they're monopolies, but that's because they're supposed to deliver cheap, reliable power, and they're doing neither.”
Heatmap News · Climate & Energy · November 2026
Context
Asked what else needs to change besides the permitting bill, Moffitt lists local siting, regional grid governance and utility oversight. She says the bill reins utilities in a little, nowhere near enough, and expects more action in the states.
Transcript
…that are going to speed the data center payment plans and the transmission. A lot of it hangs on FERC. And so we want a good FERC. That's going to have to be a top priority. I think reinstating the tax credits is probably the second thing that I would say. Pete, what's on your wish list?
…I look forward in this country. I see a restoration of the party that I've worked for in terms of being able to push through federal bills and get them enacted. And the sort of things we want to do will speed the deployment of clean electricity, but not if you can't actually move the electrons.
There are a couple of other barriers that it's worth calling out that Evergreen and our colleagues across the movement have been working on at the state and local level too that are critically important. And one is local siting and permitting. Like we do have to ensure that the clean actually can get built at scale across the country. And that is a wild patchwork of mostly roadblocks at this point to utility scale clean getting built. And so that's a huge priority for us. And then the RTO governance one is the other one. Like we got to make sure, again, FERC unleashed that they actually are leaning in to leveling some of the bureaucratic insanities in places like PJM and making sure they do their jobs. And then utilities writ large. Like I am really excited, especially after talking to my friend Dave Pomerance about many of the utility components of this bill, but the oversight of utilities has been so lax and captured, frankly, that it is unbelievable what they are allowed to do with this bargain that they struck. Yeah, they're monopolies, but that's…
Lena, you mentioned that the key of this bill is going to be FERC unleashed. And FERC is appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate, about to be a big Democratic majority. So that's a little balanced. But the way it works is that the president's party has a majority, but the minority party…
Yeah, really good question. There are a couple of data points that have given me really surprising optimism about this current FERC. One, the data center rulemaking that they put out that required some interesting components in there was stronger than we thought it would be. And I am not an expert…
So I've now worked at the federal level and the state level and in the state level, did a lot of RTO work. And it has reinforced several things to me. One, there are powers that should be rendered federally because that's where the system makes sense. And then you need to make sure that FERC is…
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