FERC: Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Table of Contents

⚠ Disclaimer: This entry may be incomplete, out of date, or inaccurate. It is AI-maintained on a best-effort basis. Do not rely on it as a sole source — verify claims independently using the sources listed below. Commission membership changes with confirmations, resignations, and term expirations; the roster below reflects official FERC bios as fetched on the last_reviewed date above.

Glossary

  • FERC — Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; the independent federal agency regulating interstate electricity transmission, wholesale electricity rates, and interstate natural gas pipelines and hydropower licensing.
  • Federal Power Act (sections 203/205/206) — The federal law provisions giving FERC authority over transmission and wholesale rates; notably does not apply within ERCOT because Texas’s grid has no synchronous tie to the rest of the country.
  • ISO / RTO — Independent System Operator / Regional Transmission Organization; the regional grid operators (PJM, MISO, CAISO, SPP, ISO-NE, NYISO) whose tariffs and market rules FERC approves.
  • Order 2222 — FERC’s rule requiring RTOs/ISOs to let aggregations of distributed energy resources (DERs) participate directly in wholesale markets — the non-Texas equivalent of ERCOT’s ADER pilot.
  • Chairman — The FERC commissioner designated by the sitting President (not elected by the other commissioners) to run the agency’s executive and administrative functions; the Chairman is one of five equal votes on substantive orders.
  • Confirmation — The U.S. Senate’s constitutional role in approving a President’s FERC nominee before they can be sworn in.

Summary

FERC is the five-member federal body that regulates interstate electricity transmission and wholesale power markets, interstate natural gas pipelines, and hydropower licensing across nearly all of the United States — with the notable exception of ERCOT, which is exempt from FERC jurisdiction because Texas’s grid isn’t synchronously connected to the rest of the country. Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate to staggered five-year terms, with no more than three of the five allowed to belong to the same political party; the President designates one commissioner as Chairman. As of this review, the sitting commissioners are Chairman Laura V. Swett, and Commissioners David Rosner, Lindsay S. See, Judy W. Chang, and David A. LaCerte. FERC’s decisions on interconnection rules, capacity market design, and DER wholesale-market access (Order 2222) directly shape which grid regions are hospitable to distributed-energy companies like Base Power — everywhere except Texas, where the PUCT plays that role instead.

Key Facts

  • Established: 1977, as successor to the Federal Power Commission
  • Structure: Five commissioners, no more than three from the same political party, each serving a staggered five-year term; appointed by the President with the advice and consent of the U.S. Senate
  • Leadership: The President designates one sitting commissioner as Chairman, who directs FERC’s executive and administrative operations; each commissioner (including the Chairman) casts an equal vote on orders
  • Jurisdiction: Interstate electricity transmission and wholesale rates, interstate natural gas pipeline certification and rates, and non-federal hydropower licensing — covers essentially the entire continental U.S. grid except ERCOT (Texas), which is exempt under Federal Power Act sections 203/205/206 due to lack of synchronous interconnection
  • Current commissioners (as of this review): Chairman Laura V. Swett; Commissioner David Rosner; Commissioner Lindsay S. See; Commissioner Judy W. Chang; Commissioner David A. LaCerte — a full five-seat bench with no vacancies noted on the official site as of the fetch date above

Key People

Chairman Laura V. Swett — Nominated by President Trump June 2, 2025; confirmed by the Senate October 7, 2025; sworn in October 20, 2025; designated Chairman October 23, 2025. Term expires June 30, 2030. Litigated FERC-related law for 15 years, most recently at Vinson & Elkins (representing generating utilities, transmission owners, and natural gas/liquids pipelines); previously served at FERC itself, advising a former Chairman and Commissioner and as a lead attorney in FERC’s Office of Enforcement. BA, University of Virginia; JD with honors, Georgetown University Law Center.

Commissioner David Rosner — Joined FERC as Commissioner in June 2024 as part of a Biden administration nomination batch alongside Commissioner Chang; briefly served as FERC’s Chairman from August 13, 2025 until October 23, 2025, during the transition to the current administration. Prior roles: energy industry analyst for FERC (with a two-year detail to the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee staff), senior policy advisor at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Policy and Systems Analysis, and associate director at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy project. Master’s degrees in economics and public policy, American University; BA in economics, Tufts University.

  • LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/rosnerdavid
  • ⚑ Overlap: Nominated in the same 2024 batch as Commissioner Chang (the Biden administration’s “three FERC nominees” announcement); both were sworn in within weeks of each other (June/July 2024).

Commissioner Lindsay S. See — Joined FERC as Commissioner in June 2024 (sworn in June 28, 2024; term expires June 30, 2028), nominated by President Biden at the recommendation of then-Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell for one of FERC’s Republican-aligned seats; confirmed 83–12. Previously Solicitor General of West Virginia, managing the state’s appellate and high-stakes litigation with a focus on energy and administrative law, including two arguments before the U.S. Supreme Court; before that, practiced appellate and administrative law for several years at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher in Washington, D.C. JD magna cum laude, Harvard Law School (executive editor, Harvard Law Review); clerked for Judge Thomas B. Griffith, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit; undergraduate at Patrick Henry College.

Commissioner Judy W. Chang — Joined FERC as Commissioner in July 2024 (sworn in July 15, 2024; term expires June 30, 2029), nominated in the same Biden administration batch as Commissioner Rosner. Former Undersecretary of Energy and Climate Solutions for Massachusetts, where she set climate and energy-sector policy for the Commonwealth. More than 20 years of energy economics and policy experience advising energy companies, trade associations, and governments (including testimony before U.S. federal/state agencies and Canadian regulators) on transmission planning, market design, and clean energy/storage investment. Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Senior Fellow at its Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government; founding board member, New England Women in Energy and the Environment. MPP, Harvard Kennedy School; BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Davis.

Commissioner David A. LaCerte — Confirmed by the Senate in 2025; sworn in October 27, 2025; term expires June 30, 2026 (a short remainder term, consistent with filling a partial vacancy rather than a fresh five-year appointment). Over two decades in public service, law, and regulatory policy: senior roles at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, and Cabinet Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Veterans Affairs under Governor Bobby Jindal; also practiced energy-sector litigation at a Houston law firm (2023–2025); a former U.S. Marine who served in Afghanistan. JD, LSU Paul M. Hebert Law Center; BA, Nicholls State University.

Key People — Last Reviewed: 2026-07-09

Why This Is Worth Tracking

FERC doesn’t touch ERCOT directly, but it sets the rules everywhere else — meaning FERC’s Order 2222 implementation timeline, capacity market reforms, and interconnection-queue rulemakings are the primary federal levers determining how fast companies like Base Power (or its future competitors) can replicate the Texas playbook in PJM, MISO, or other FERC-jurisdictional regions. The Commission’s 3–2 partisan makeup and the Chairman’s agenda-setting power (Chairman Swett’s June 2026 “Supercharge America’s Grid” initiative and the ongoing PJM governance technical conference are both current examples) also make it a useful barometer for which way federal energy policy is leaning at any given moment — directly relevant to any DER company whose expansion plans run through a FERC-regulated ISO/RTO.

Claim Verification

Claim: FERC currently has five sitting commissioners with no vacancies — Swett, Rosner, See, Chang, and LaCerte

Status: Verified

Supporting sources:

  • FERC official commissioners page and individual bio pages fetched directly on the last_reviewed date above, listing all five by name with sworn-in and term-expiration dates

Summary: Directly confirmed via FERC’s own website. Note that Commissioner LaCerte’s term expires June 30, 2026 — very close to this review date — so this roster should be re-verified against the official page at the next scheduled review to confirm whether he has been reconfirmed, replaced, or the seat has gone vacant.

Claim: No more than three of the five FERC commissioners may belong to the same political party

Status: Verified

Supporting sources:

Summary: Confirmed via an authoritative secondary source (CRS). The current roster (Swett, See, and LaCerte associated with the appointing Republican administration; Rosner and Chang from the prior Democratic administration’s nomination batch) is consistent with this 3–2 structural limit, though party affiliation for sitting commissioners is inferred from nominating administration and reporting rather than from a formal FERC-published party designation.

Sources

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