Though the Kentucky native leading the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission acknowledged his personal ties to coal country while speaking before industry representatives, he offered few ways for the agency to assist coal-fired utilities any time soon.
Speaking at the National Coal Council's Fall Annual Meeting in Washington, FERC Chairman Neil Chatterjee said he has seen the "devastating impacts" that retiring plants and shuttered mines can have on communities that may lack other forms of employment. The chairman visited Colstrip, Mont., home of the Colstrip plant which will retire two coal-fired units by the end of the year, and said one of his main takeaways was the reality that the benefits of the energy transition "are not being felt evenly."
"It is not lost on me that plant retirements affect jobs and communities," he said Sept. 11. "When the mines close and the plants that they feed shut down, those homes tend to lose all value because nobody wants to move to an area without hope for economic prosperity."
After previously terminating a rulemaking from the U.S. Department of Energy that would have provided more funding for coal and nuclear plants to avoid premature closures, the commission is seeking to identify attributes needed for a resilient grid as well as any threats to that resiliency across the country. FERC is closely considering comments, Chatterjee said, but he declined to speculate on the timeline of the process.
"We're putting a lot of work into it," Chatterjee said in an interview following his presentation. "We've got a lot on our plates, but I'm hoping for sooner rather than later."
The commission cannot choose the sources of generation in the markets it oversees or consider factors such as community impacts in its decisions, he said.
"When a coal plant shuts down and that has ripple effects throughout our local economies," he said, "that's just not something that we can lawfully take into account in the decisions that we make."
The chairman is organizing a bipartisan event in Kentucky on Oct. 21 to gather parties with varying energy perspectives to speak with Kentuckians about the challenges they face in the energy transition. He said he hopes the summit will connect energy professionals from across the nation with the commonwealth state's businesses, officials and economic development staff and provide opportunities for the communities.
"The same forklift that can be used to move coal in eastern Kentucky can be used to move the component parts of a battery storage device," Chatterjee said.
