Former chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, Mark Christie, was tapped by President Donald Trump to lead the independent Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on Monday.
“It’s a challenge, a big challenge,” Christie said in a phone interview on Monday, after the news dropped.
Christie has served as a commissioner on FERC for four years and before that, he was chairman of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, a body that he served on for nearly 17 years. Before that, he led the Virginia Board of Education and was counsel to then-Gov. George Allen in the 1990s.
Christie noted in a post on X that during his time with FERC, he has put emphasis on protecting consumers from excessive power bills, meeting the reliability crisis driven by losses of dispatchable power generation and failure to build new generation, in the face of rising demand.
FERC, an independent and nonpartisan federal agency, regulates the interstate transmission of electricity, natural gas, and oil. It also reviews proposals to build liquefied natural gas terminals and interstate natural gas pipelines, as well as licensing hydropower projects, according to the agency’s website.
“Our focus is really on electricity and the grid,” he said. “We have jurisdiction over the gas pipelines, like Mountain Valley Pipeline, [FERC] approved that.”
Christie will replace former FERC chair, Willie Phillips, who was appointed to the position by former President Joe Biden.
He noted that the federal agency is independent of the executive branch in that the president cannot instruct the body to decide a case one way or another. The five-member body typically determines cases before it through a majority vote.
“Yes, we’re independent, but we don’t live in a vacuum,” he said.
From Virginia’s SCC to FERC
Former Gov. George Allen, whom Christie once served, called Christie’s selection “a smart, wise and perfectly logical decision.”
In a statement to Cardinal News, Allen said: “That is really great news! I’m thrilled to hear. . . Mark Christie understands the importance of productive energy policies to provide affordable and reliable electricity to people and their businesses. Mark Christie decides issues based on factual reality over whimsical notions that unnecessarily increase the costs of electricity, natural gas, fuels and food which regressively hit hardest lower and middle income working families.”
Christie was born in Bluefield, West Virginia, which Allen took note of. “Being originally from energy producing Appalachia, Mark Christie knows that energy must be safely and efficiently transported from the sources to the millions of consumers outside the region. We should ‘drill baby drill.’ And, we need to need to convey the ‘drilled’ natural resources from the production location to factories, power plants, businesses and homes.”
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, has known Christie for years and serves on the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I am thrilled to hear that Commissioner Mark Christie has been selected by President Trump to chair the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission,” Griffith said in a statement. “His more than 16 years on the Virginia State Corporation Commission and 4 years on FERC make him an excellent candidate to lead FERC. Over the years in the Virginia House of Delegates, I received excellent advice from now-Commissioner Christie. I look forward to his work on FERC and continued conversations in regards to energy policies affecting the country.”
Christie was tapped to fill a vacancy on the federal commission in 2020 by Trump, who referred to him at the time as one of the nation’s longest serving utility regulators. Christie was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in November 2020 and took office in January 2021. He was one of two Republicans on the commission at the time of Trump’s 2025 inauguration, according to Politico’s E&E News.
While a commissioner on FERC, Christie called for the body to only grant incentives for building power lines after those lines have been approved by state utility regulators, according to an August report by Utility Dive.
“I’ve always said, because I spent 17 years at the Virginia commission, that while FERC doesn’t have jurisdiction over [energy] retail rates — the states do, like the SCC — what FERC does affects those rates, though, and I’m very very sensitive to that,” he said. “Consumers are concerned everywhere about rising rates and I’m concerned too.”
He said that the federal agency needs to work with the states on an equal partnership to try to address the issue of rising energy rates and reliability.
Christie said his time with Virginia’s SCC has helped to form his guideposts for his time at FERC — with the needs of the consumer at the center. Christie was elected to the state role by Republican-controlled General Assemblies in 2004, 2010 and 2016. Virginia’s SCC regulates utilities, insurance and banking.
In his role as SCC chair, Christie had occasionally criticized Dominion Energy, which the commission regulates. In May 2019, he warned from the bench that the SCC would take on Dominion’s requests with heightened scrutiny. He admonished the utility for filing to the commission a “photoshopped” long-term plan that failed to provide an accurate picture for the public, consumers and regulators of what was coming down the road, according to a report by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. (Disclosure: Dominion is one of our donors, but donors have no say in news decisions; see our policy).
Christie taught regulatory law for a decade as an adjunct faculty member at the University of Virginia School of Law and constitutional law and government for 20 years in a doctoral program at Virginia Commonwealth University, according to his biography page on the FERC website.