What do we know as of February 1 about key Trump appointees responsible for administering White House policies affecting the power generation industry? Not much.

As the Trump administration settles in, how his teams at energy and environment agencies will implement his policy agenda remains unclear, as does his agenda. At the end of January, none of the Trump nominees for key energy and environment jobs had won Senate confirmation. The Senate Environment and Natural Resources committee approved former Texas Governor Rick Perry to be Department of Energy (DOE) secretary, by a bipartisan vote of 16–7 (the committee consists of 12 Republicans and 11 Democrats). Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) got the nod to head the Interior Department by a 16–6 vote. Neither nomination has been scheduled for full Senate consideration.

The Senate Environment and Public Works Committee the same day punted on the nomination of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to be Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) chief, putting the vote off to the next day, February 1. Democrats boycotted that vote and Pruitt has not yet gotten a committee vote.

A Different Management Style

Much of the story of how the Trump administration unfolds depends on the president’s management style in dealing with his executive branch agencies. Is Trump a CEO who gives his cabinet officers freedom to run their departments? Or is he a micromanager, as his recent predecessors have been?

Analyses of past political administrations of both parties found that the White House generally runs the show; Cabinet secretaries often become figureheads. That’s been true even when the president says he’s giving his teams a long leash, as was the case with Barack Obama. Trump, predictably, has made that claim. Agency heads once in office have a tendency to jump the White House ship and embrace their agencies’ agenda.

The Trump operation offers evidence of a White House political commissariat to police agency heads. Politico reported, “The White House is installing senior aides atop major federal agencies to shadow the administration’s Cabinet secretaries, creating a direct line with loyalists who can monitor and shape White House goals across the federal bureaucracy.” These apparatchiks are titled “senior adviser” at the agencies. According to Politico, they have “already been responsible for hiring at some departments and crafting the blueprint of Trump policy before the Cabinet members win Senate confirmation to take office.”

The Politico article identifies Wells Griffith as Trump’s DOE “senior adviser.” Griffith was “battleground states” coordinator for Trump last year. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination to an Alabama congressional seat in 2013, and before that was a top staffer member at the Republican National Committee under now-White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

An EPA Shakeup

The EPA is an early focus for the White House, although the agency does not yet have a Republican administrator. Soon after Trump took the oath of office on January 20, he entered the Oval Office to sign an executive order calling on federal agencies to roll back regulations and streamline regulatory reviews, including at EPA.

Myron Ebell, a global warming skeptic and head of the Trump transition team at EPA, predicted January 30 that the U.S. will withdraw from the Paris climate agreement. Not long after that, “senior advisor” Don Benton at EPA undercut Ebell, who works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, noting that Ebell no longer serves on the transition team.

Trump’s treatment of Obama’s Clean Power Plan will tell a lot about his intentions toward federal environmental regulation. Pruitt likely has a mandate to kill the Obama regulatory regime aimed at existing coal-fired power plants.

Rescinding the Obama EPA regulation will require a new rulemaking, following the requirements of the 1946 Administrative Procedures Act (Pub.L. 79–404, 60 Stat. 237). The law requires public notice and comment, a transparent review, and the opportunity for federal court review. A new rule, replacing the Obama plan to reduce greenhouse gases from existing coal-fired plants, will likely need a new environmental impact analysis, with plentiful opportunities for comment, and multiple lawsuits in federal court by proponents and opponents of the new rules. The challenge for the administration is to avoid having the courts rule that its repeal of existing regulation is “arbitrary and capricious.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit—now reviewing the EPA coal rules—could simplify the politics and streamline repeal by declaring the EPA plan invalid. Then the issue could advance to the U.S. Supreme Court, which earlier bumped the dispute back to the appeals court. Trump’s nominee to the high court—now divided 4–4 on many contentious issues—could decide the Obama rule.

Probable Developments for Federal Coal Reserves, LNG, Oil Pipelines

As this is written in early February, new Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke probably will kill the Obama interim moratorium on new leases of federal coal reserves. This mostly affects the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. Repealing the coal leasing moratorium is largely symbolic. A surfeit of federal coal is already under lease. While repeal of the Obama order responds to Trump’s pledge to revive the coal industry, it may have little practical impact.

At the DOE, the White House does not have a heavy regulatory agenda to overturn by executive action. One area could be liquefied natural gas exports (LNG). The administration could move to expedite DOE approvals of LNG export permits. This would not have a major impact on natural gas prices or supplies to domestic users, including natural gas–fired electric generation.

The State Department under new Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, former ExxonMobil CEO, will try to implement a Trump executive order to expedite (and presumably approve) the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline to move Canadian crude to U.S. refineries and the Dakota Access Pipeline moving North Dakota crude oil south. The Trump order did not repeal a 1968 executive order by Lyndon Johnson giving the State Department review of the environmental impact of many cross-border projects. State may have to review its current environmental impact statement for Keystone XL, adding further time to fulfilling Trump’s intent.

New Directions for Key Energy Regulatory Entities

Beyond the Cabinet, important White House appointments at regulatory agencies are pending at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) and the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). On January 26, Trump named Cheryl LaFleur to replace Norman Bay, both Democrats, as chairman. Bay promptly resigned, leaving the regulatory agency with two sitting Democrats and no quorum. The White House the same day followed by naming Kristine Svinicki as the new chairman of the NRC, ousting Independent Stephen Burns, chairman for the past two years.

Both commissions have legally mandated Republican majorities, although reversing the partisan balance can’t happen immediately. FERC and NRC commissioners serve five-year terms under federal law. The president can designate a chairman from among the sitting commissioners (and would name a Republican to be chairman when he got a majority of the seats on the commission).

At FERC, LaFleur was acting FERC chairman from November 2013 to July 2014 and chairman from July 2014 to April 2105, when Bay took the gavel. She’s a widely respected commissioner. FERC now has three vacant commission seats, all of which are Republican choices.

Georgia Public Service Commission member Bubba McDonald, the first state-wide elected politician in Georgia to endorse Trump, is campaigning for a FERC seat. McDonald has ties to Trump advisor Newt Gingrich, a former speaker of the U.S. House from Georgia. Another name surfacing the FERC sweepstakes is Neil Chatterjee, a long-time energy advisor to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

FERC appointments have long been perquisites of congressional leaders, back to the far reaches of 1970s energy politics. That suggests that Chatterjee is the front runner. McDonald might get a shot a seat, maybe not as chairman.

At the NRC, Svinicki’s appointment ends in June. Naming her chairman suggests she will get another term at the NRC. She’s a smart and strong advocate of nuclear power, coupled with a hard-charging and sometimes abrasive personality.

Another NRC possibility is Annie Caputo, a former Exelon Corp. executive, who has advised Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.), former chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, on nuclear issues. Caputo was rumored to be a Republican choice for the NRC in 2015, but then-Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) scuttled her chances because of her support for resurrecting Yucca Mountain as a nuclear waste repository. Her views on Yucca Mountain could be a hurdle for a seat at the NRC, as both Nevada Republic Sen. Dean Heller and freshman Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto oppose reviving the Yucca Mountain project.

Heller, up for reelection in 2018, was a low-key skeptic of Trump in 2016. Heller is vulnerable at home. Nevada is becoming Democratic territory, as Cortez Masto’s election showed. Support for Yucca Mountain is toxic in Nevada, regardless of party. If Trump wants to keep Heller in the Senate, it may avoid a fight over Yucca Mountain. Politico commented that Heller is “likely to fight back if Trump seeks to resuscitate the proposed nuclear waste disposal site at Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, an issue the president-elect sidestepped during the campaign.”

—Ken Maize, Contributing Editor. Kennedy Maize is a long-time energy journalist and frequent contributor to POWER

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