On January 21, 2021, newly inaugurated President Joe Biden announced that he was appointing Commissioner Richard Glick to be the new Chairman of FERC. Under his predecessors, Commissioner Glick was prolific in his dissents from natural gas certification and authorization orders, as well as subsequent orders in certificate proceedings, often touching on topics including climate change and landowner rights. But now that he is Chairman, and with the potential for another Democratic-leaning appointee joining the Commission when Commissioner Neil Chatterjee’s term expires later this year, what could this mean for the natural gas certification process?

This whitepaper examines three separate natural gas certification cases. But rather than looking at the certifications themselves, this white paper examines the dissents filed by then-Commissioner Glick in select major rulings throughout the lifespan of each of the dockets, in order to provide a template which certifications could follow under a Commission controlled by a Democratic-leaning majority.