President Donald Trump selected Commissioner Neil Chatterjee, a Republican appointee, to be the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, replacing fellow Republican Kevin McIntyre, according to an Oct. 24 announcement. Chatterjee, a former energy adviser for Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, was acting chairman of FERC last year before McIntyre’s confirmation, and during that critical time he oversaw FERC’s initial response to the U.S. Department of Energy’s controversial proposal to prop up coal and nuclear plants, filed in Sept. 2017. Despite supporting a short term subsidy plan throughout the heated debate, he eventually voted against the DOE’s proposal, with the rest of the commission. The move comes after the ailing health of former FERC Chairman McIntyre caused him to miss the commission’s regular monthly meetings and eventually step down, although he plans to remain as a commissioner at FERC, allowing Republicans to preserve partisan parity until nominee Bernard McNamee is confirmed by the Senate. The federal regulator is currently juggling a major investigation into grid resilience, a capacity market overhaul in PJM Interconnection LLC and ISO-New England Inc. and the implementation of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act.