The Obama administration has ended a federal family feud over wave energy between the Minerals Management Service (MMS) and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).
FERC will now have control of the hydrokinetic licensing process, a joint statement issued Tuesday by acting FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. MMS will control all wind and solar energy.
FERC had proposed just such a deal more than a year ago but the MMS said then that their agency would have to finish their rulemaking process before signing any deal.
The two agencies have been bickering for five years, seemingly without anybody upstairs noticing.
Industry leaders and environmentalists alike begged unsuccessfully for leadership on alternative energy and other environmental controversies during the Bush administration.
Those prayers are now being answered, but not always in the ways the askers have expected.
Salazar has made a flurry of decisions in his first two months at the helm that have managed to simultaneously thrill and infuriate almost everyone.
Environmentalists are angry at rancher Salazar about Interior”s current delisting of the wolf. At the same time, Salazar irked the biggest industry in his native Colorado by halting a Bush shale oil development plan because of environmental considerations.
Salazar has identified a strategy for developing solar and wind power that seeks a level of cooperation not seen previously in the federal government. He has referred to the fact that wave energy is mostly in the research stage, and has now passed that over to FERC.
MMS will continue with its rulemaking, minus energy from the ocean.
That is just what FERC wanted all along. FERC has shown little or no interest in solar or wind energy regulation. In the clear absence of leadership, FERC had pioneered the whole idea of “hydrokinetic” power generation.
Developers of tidal, wave, ocean current and river flow energy will continue to be given permits and eventually power licensees by FERC, now with no interference from MMS.
FERC was harshly criticized by Interior and other state and federal agencies for ignoring rulemaking and treating federal environmental law as red tape.
Salazar has also harshly criticized the previous administration for allowing a backlog of more than 200 solar energy projects and 20 projects to accumulate in the Southwest. Clearing that backlog and constructing a new strategy that combines oil, gas, biomass, solar and wind energy development into a single strategy are now priorities.
The Bush administration released an offshore alternative energy development plan last summer that was simply allowed to expire without any action being taken, despite thousands of public, industry and government comments being submitted.
Salazar”s first secretarial order made the production, development, and delivery of renewable energy top priorities for Interior.
His secretarial order also establishes an energy and climate change task force that will spur this agenda and identify specific zones on U.S. public lands where Interior can facilitate a rapid and responsible move to large-scale production of solar, wind, geothermal and biomass energy.
That includes offshore, where 900 gigawatts of wind power has been identified off the West Coast.
A final Memo of Understanding (MOU) has not yet been finalized between MMS and FERC, which would include specific details on the process.
President Obama now has the chance to determine FERC”s new direction. The man who led FERC during the Bush administration, Joseph T. Kelliher, quit on March 13, giving Obama the chance to appoint a Democrat to the commission, which is now split 2-2.
Kelliher was chairman of the commission from July 9, 2005 until Jan. 22, 2009. He was appointed by Bush to FERC in 2003.
Obama replaced him as chairman with Wellinghoff, who so far has only been named acting chairman.
