FERC Nominee Dumped: Opposed Direct Financial Aid To Coal Plants, Opposed By Trump's Coal Donors

[hatrack]

EDIT

POLITICO reported last month that David Hill, who served as the Energy Department's general counsel under President George W. Bush, was the likely candidate for a seat on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. A senior administration official said at the time that Hill was "almost certain" to be tapped.

But Perry and other senior DOE officials opposed giving the post to Hill, who had publicly criticized the Trump administration's push to offer financial aid to coal power plants — and they were joined in the effort by Joe Craft's Alliance Resource Partners and Bob Murray's Murray Energy Corp., the sources said. Both coal companies are major GOP donors, and Trump has said he planned to nominate Craft's wife, Kelly Knight Craft, to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. When reached by POLITICO on Tuesday, Hill acknowledged that the White House informed him last week that his nomination process had been terminated.

He had been expected to fill the vacancy created by former FERC Chairman Kevin McIntyre's death in January. But the parallel efforts by Perry and the coal industry proved to be more persuasive with Trump than his chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, who was lobbying for Hill. FERC, an independent agency headed by a five-person board, oversees much of the nation’s electric grid as well as regional power markets. It has become a significant player in the debate about the Trump administration’s efforts to secure coal’s place in the U.S. power supply despite withering competition from alternatives like natural gas and wind.

A Republican, Hill worked as a DOE deputy general counsel for three years before becoming the agency’s top lawyer. And like several other Bush energy officials, Hill openly criticized a DOE proposal to FERC that was aimed at propping up money-losing coal and nuclear power plants, calling it "absolutely not the solution" to fix the electricity markets. Hundreds of coal-fired power plants have closed in recent years. Both Craft and Murray have pressed the Trump administration to support the industry, which has seen its share of the nation's electricity generation plunge from more than 50 percent a decade ago to less than 30 percent last year.

EDIT

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/19/coal-companies-rick-perry-trump-1228041

[riversedge]

1. Trumps staff MUST be Loyal to HIM--not to what is good for the USA environment, health, well-being.

I am going to work my buns off getting TRUMP OUT OF OFFICE #Election2020