Oct. 27—A committee charged with selecting nominees for a seat on the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission last week held public interviews with six remaining hopefuls, including the commissioner whose term expires at the end of this year.
“I think people recognize that I really work in the public interest,” incumbent Commissioner James Ellison said before the committee at the Roundhouse on Thursday.
Ellison was one of three governor-appointed commissioners who will take office in January 2023 in an overhauled China. Although the new appointee will serve a six-year term, the expiration dates of the commissioners’ original terms were staggered, leaving Ellison with just two years.
“I really try my best to be honest,” he told the committee. “If you were to talk to the utilities and ask what they think of me, they certainly won’t be happy with all the decisions I’ve made over the last two years, but I think they would say that I strive to be fair and that I am working to be well informed and prepared on the issues I vote on.”
The five other contenders for Ellison’s seat indicated during interviews with the committee how they would aspire to act in the position — and how they would hope to be remembered after a six-year term. The candidates range from renewable energy advocates to oil and gas professionals. The commission is expected to vote Nov. 7 on a list of names to send to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, who will have the final say.
In addition to Ellison, the incumbent commissioner and former grid analyst at Sandia National Laboratories, the committee interviewed:
* Stephen Meyer, founder and CEO of a New Mexico-based energy consulting firm.
* Flavious Smith, an oil and gas manager for Bank of America.
* Bless Chukwu, a former Arizona Corporation Commission employee who retired earlier this year.
* Greg Nibert, an outgoing Republican senator and oil and gas attorney.
* Debra Hicks, principal engineer and owner of a Hobbs-based engineering firm.
One candidate who was scheduled to interview on Wednesday, Collin Walcavich, did not show up for the meeting. Commission staff told commission members that they had contacted Walcavich — a director of regulatory affairs and strategy for a Boston-based energy developer — with phone calls and emails but had not received a response.
The seven-member committee consists of people with different backgrounds in the energy sector and policy. The person appointed to the commission this year cannot be registered with the Democratic Party as the other two sitting commissioners are registered Democrats.
The only group to comment publicly on the process so far is the environmental advocacy group Conservation Voters New Mexico, which encouraged the committee to consider advancing Meyer and Walcavich based on their backgrounds in renewable energy.
Meyer’s resume notes his ties to the Renewable Taos group and his company Energy Demand Solutions Inc., which he describes as an “energy efficiency consulting and implementation firm.” He touted his experience managing “complex organizations” and said he would pay immediate attention to energy efficiency efforts across the state.
Meyer also raised the prospect of “life cycle” cost evaluations for utility procurements. Such analyses, he said, would take into account the “social costs” and public health costs that might be incurred over the life of a facility.
“For more than 150 years, the true life cycle costs of fossil fuels have been ignored, or at least greatly underestimated,” Meyer wrote in responses to the commission’s questionnaire. “The actual costs are much higher than the market price because they have many, and now well-known, negative consequences for the environment and health.” He cited “poisoning of air, land and water, increased disease and mortality and loss of biodiversity.”
Committee Chairwoman Seguin asked each candidate about “the urgent need to address climate change,” which she said has been a recurring theme in public comments submitted to the committee.
“It’s hard to define ‘urgent’ as it relates to the world we live in now,” Hicks said.
“Some environmental concerns are urgent needs, for example the flooding in Roswell,” she continued. “What each individual person calls urgent is different, and while we need to respond to their concerns, I think it may not be urgent… and that could get me in trouble.”
Hicks told the committee about her experience as chair of the New Mexico State University Board of Regents and her career as a civil engineer.
Chukwu told the committee that she could bring “a new perspective” to the state regulatory body. She said that after spending her career on the “staff” side of the job, she was interested in becoming a commissioner.
Other candidates cited their background in the oil and gas industry as relevant experience for work on the committee.
Smith and Nibert – who both have oil and gas backgrounds – expressed an interest in shaping the state’s energy future.
Smith currently lives in Tennessee and works as an oil and gas manager for Bank of America. He mentioned several times during his interview that his son holds a position at global energy company AES, saying he has become interested in developments in sustainable energy.
Nibert – who lost the primary election for his Senate seat earlier this year – told the committee that he became interested in serving in the PRC after seeing that the governor’s appointed committee “works,” in contrast to the corruption and ‘self-dealing’. that was clear in the past, the voter-elected commission, he said.
When asked about his thoughts on “the role of renewable energy” in the state’s future, Nibert said, “I have wondered if we can ever get to the point where we are 100% dependent on renewable energy sources,” adding added: “I think it is a mistake for any public policy body to make demands that cannot be achieved.”
The state’s energy transition law, passed in 2019, requires electric utilities to be carbon-free by 2045.
“It is the PRC’s job to enforce these laws and ensure that the utilities comply with them,” Nibert responded when asked about the “urgent need to address climate change.”
“I would enforce the laws as written,” he said. “The People’s Republic of China is not the right body to determine government policy.”
Ellison pointed to a recent commission rulemaking process that he saw as an important step in standardizing the reporting of reliability data by electric utilities. The rule — which the commission adopted in August — requires the three investor-owned utilities to report outage data to the agency every year beginning in March 2025. Ellison referred to the lack of such reporting by the utilities to date. as “a hole” that was resolved by the rule.
“I would like to be known as someone who has really made an effort on the regulatory side, and helped codify some high-quality rules that are really in the public interest,” Ellison said.
