Expo '74 days
When Philip Moeller pulled himself out of bed at 3 a.m. on sub-zero nights to check on lambing sheep or feeder cattle at the family ranch on Tower Mountain here, he couldn't have known that someday he would serve as the first member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from the Pacific Northwest.

Nor could he have known that he and the other members of the commission would give final approval in 2009 to Avista Corp.'s application to relicense five of its hydropower dams on the Spokane River.

Moeller notes wryly that it's "relatively easy" to teach children responsibility "when you're on the land."

At FERC, which is a powerful panel, it might be said he's on the energy grid. FERC is the "economic regulator" of interstate oil and natural-gas pipelines, overseeing transportation tariffs, access, and capacity of the pipelines as well as the siting of the natural-gas pipelines, Moeller says. It has some authority in the siting of liquid natural gas terminals and is charged with "maintaining the reliability of the bulk power system," or the high-voltage transmission lines that carry electricity between companies and regions in the U.S.

FERC spends most of its time on regulation of the wholesale electric market. Yet, Moeller says, it's most well-known in the Northwest for its licensing of non-federally owned hydropower facilities, the safety of which it also regulates.

Environmental, recreational, and other issues that arise during dam licensings and relicensings are much more thoroughly vetted today than they once were, and as cost, environmental, and other issues have gained importance, some older dams have been dismantled rather than being relicensed.

At the national level, such issues as a run-up in natural gas prices—and whether market manipulations have occurred—are more prominent, he says.

In the wake of spiking energy prices and alleged market manipulation in 2000 and 2001, Congress gave FERC greater power in 2005 to wield against violators, allowing the agency to fine companies $1 million a day per violation, Moeller says.

"Arguably, if FERC had had that authority back in 2000 and 2001, some of that wouldn't have happened," he says of the price spikes, which destroyed some companies, caused widespread economic pain, and saddled Avista Corp. with enormous losses. "Maybe a lot of it wouldn't have happened."

Spokane River relicensing
Moeller still has his laminated pass to the Expo '74 world's fair here, which he attended several times and says was educational for him. He says, though, that Expo '74 reflected a different world.

"It was still the Cold War," Moeller says. He remembers the Soviet Pavilion, with its commanding bust of Lenin, and adds, "It was definitely full of propaganda," with an audio recording trumpeting Soviet achievements.

Moeller played shortstop and pitched for Freeman High School, where he belonged to Future Farmers of America and was a member of the school debate team.

"We had a good team," he says. "Our senior year, we debated Northwest energy issues—many of which are still with us."

Moeller's mother, Phyllis, was principal at Woodridge Elementary School, and his late father, Don, was with Farm Credit Bank here for many years, served on the chamber Ag Bureau, and was the longtime parliamentarian for the Spokane City Council. Moeller attended Stanford University, where he studied economics and earned a bachelor's degree in political science. During the summers, he worked as a machinist at a salmon cannery in Petersburg, Alaska, putting in more hours than cannery workers are allowed to work today. "It was pretty intense," but the money was good, Moeller says.

Moeller's first political mentor was state Sen. Max Benitz Sr., of the Tri-Cities, who Moeller says was known as the father of Washington's premium wine industry, which he championed. Through Benitz, Moeller became staff head of the Washington Senate Committee on Energy, Utilities, and Telecommunications. He was with the committee for 10 years before leaving for Washington, D.C., in 1997 to work for U.S. Sen. Slade Gorton on energy issues.

After U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell unseated Gorton in the 2000 election, Moeller worked in the Washington, D.C., office of Calpine Corp., a San Jose, Calif.-based independent power producer, then moved to the office there of Alliant Energy, a Madison, Wis.-based company that he says was progressive and heavily into wind power and conservation early on.

Moeller is the only nonlawyer on the commission, whose five members are appointed by the president. President George W. Bush appointed Moeller, who was sworn in three years ago.

In 2005, Congress directed FERC to be responsible for marketing and enforcement rules for the bulk power system, Moeller says. Voluntary compliance by users began after blackouts in 1965.

Moeller says that while he worked for Gorton in 1998, he put together the bill to implement the bulk power system marketing and enforcement rules. He says that because energy politics and policies are complex and energy bills address a lot of policies at once, Congress tends to pass them only infrequently.Moeller says the Spokane River relicensing case was complex.

"There were a lot of issues," he says. "There's typically a lot of tradeoffs, as with any energy source." The case included an unusual issue regarding whether water flows over Spokane Falls would be sufficient to provide aesthetically pleasing views, Moeller says.

He calls today "a new era—the most exciting time to be involved in energy policy in my lifetime." He says new energy resources have "terrific potential" and adds "the awareness of the consequences of emissions is good."

Yet, he says, "It all comes with trade-offs." For example, he says, "The wind doesn't blow all the time," limiting wind power's potential. "There are some tough problems to solve. They're not insurmountable."

Even though debates swirl around energy policy continuously, Moeller says, "People want their electricity. They might not be too enthusiastic about the infrastructure that comes with it."

Utilities recently submitted proposals seeking billions of dollars in federal stimulus money to fund investments in energy infrastructure, and when it's appropriate, FERC will work with the U.S. Department of Energy to see the money is spent consistently with FERC policy, Moeller says.

More transmission capacity is needed in the U.S., Moeller says. He says the nation basically has three electrical grids: the Texas grid, which covers that state; the western grid, which covers the western U.S. to the continental divide; and the eastern grid, which covers 40 states and two-thirds of the land mass of the continental U.S. "It's not physically possible" to move power between the eastern and western halves of the U.S., but right now, north-south movement of megawatts is much more critical than east-west transmission, he says.

Moeller once worked on the issues posed by endangered salmon and steelhead runs in the lower Snake River, where the federal government operates four major dams, and says he still follows the issues as closely as he can.

"It's very political" and involves American Indian treaty issues, commercial versus recreational fishing interests, and a host of other matters, he says. The Obama administration has said it will take a fresh look at the lower Snake dams, including possibly the option of breaching the dams in an effort to restore fish runs. Yet, Moeller says, if that were done, "replacing that kind of clean generation is going to be extremely disruptive. I'd like to focus on fish survival and things in the region that focus on all four of the H's"—habitat, hydropower, harvest, and hatcheries, which are seen as the major factors that affect fish runs.

The use of bulb turbines and other technology to capture more power from dams is promising, but because of fisheries issues, investors are saying the Northwest "is a region we'll go to later" with such technologies, Moeller says.

The Spokane area, with automatic meter-reading technology leader Itron Corp., a "progressive" utility like Avista Corp., and such companies as fuel-cell maker ReliOn, is "very well-positioned to export its expertise—probably throughout the world," Moeller says. He says that's because new communication capability provided by two-way metering technology will help make the global electrical network interactive.

"Consumers are going to be empowered to make new choices on their own," Moeller says. Those options will include deciding when to use energy to take advantage of lower rates. Moeller says that during his recent visit to Spokane for the Waterpower XVI conference, he visited Itron's Liberty Lake offices, where the company showed him technology it's working on. "What I saw them doing out there was really exciting," particularly in regard to technology for natural gas companies, he says.

Moeller has a year left on his term, and says he's unsure what he'll do when his term ends. As for hobbies, the one-time shortstop and pitcher, a Washington, D.C., resident, used to try to catch the Seattle Mariners games whenever the Northwest team visited nearby Baltimore to play the Orioles. Now, however, he says he and his wife, Elizabeth, have a 2 1/2-year-old twin boy and girl, and "that's kind of my focus right now."