Manchin comes out against Biden nominee for energy commission

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who chairs the Senate’s Energy and Natural Resources Committee, has come out in opposition to President Biden’s renomination of an interstate energy regulator. 

Manchin spokesperson Sam Runyon said via email that the senator is “not comfortable holding a hearing” on the confirmation of Richard Glick for another term on the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). 

Runyon’s brief email did not elaborate on Manchin’s reasoning.

Glick’s term on the energy commission expired over the summer, but he’s allowed to serve until the end of the year.

Manchin’s position, which was first reported by Bloomberg Law, comes amid both new tensions on energy issues between Manchin and Biden as well as opposition from Manchin to a high-profile climate action by FERC. 

FERC has authority over interstate energy issues, including pipelines and power lines that cross state lines. The five-member board cannot have more than three members of the same political party; Democrats currently outnumber Republicans 3-2. 

Biden renominated Glick, who is FERC’s chairman, for another term in May. 

The president recently garnered Manchin’s ire when he said during a California speech that he wanted to shut down coal plants in favor of solar and wind energy. 

Following that speech, Manchin called the remarks “offensive and disgusting,” accusing the president of taking job losses lightly. 

“President Biden’s comments are not only outrageous and divorced from reality, they ignore the severe economic pain the American people are feeling because of rising energy costs,” he said, while calling on Biden to apologize. 

The energy commission, meanwhile, also also angered Manchin with a climate move earlier this year. In February, FERC said that it would consider pipelines’ contributions to climate change as part of their decisions on whether to approve them. 

At the time, Manchin, said that FERC went “too far” and said it was putting a “political agenda” over its mission of ensuring energy reliability and security. 

The organization later pulled back somewhat, saying it would treat the idea as a proposal only rather than implementing it immediately. 

A spokesperson for FERC declined to comment. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.