Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) said Thursday he would join Republicans in voting against former Colorado regulator Ron Binz for FERC chairman, which would sink his nomination if the rest of the votes in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee split along party lines.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the committee’s ranking minority member, set the Republican tone at Binz’s confirmation hearing last Tuesday when she said she could not support Binz. With a committee line-up of 12 Democrats and 10 Republicans, it would take the defection of only one Democrat (Manchin) to throw it into a tie, which is the same as a no vote in the committee. The nomination would not make it to the Senate floor.

“I’m not aware of anyone on the Republican side [of the committee] who supports him,” according to a committee spokesman, but he acknowledged that he has not taken a head count.

“Based on Mr. Binz’s record in Colorado, I have grave concerns about how he would regulate our energy sector as the next chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission [FERC],” Manchin said. “Mr. Binz’s actions prove that he prioritizes renewables over reliability. His approach of demonizing coal and gas has increased electricity costs for consumers.

“I believe Mr. Binz’s record is unacceptable for a FERC chairman. As a former executive, I truly believe that the president should have the utmost discretion when assembling his team; however, after my conversations with Mr. Binz, I respectfully cannot support his appointment as FERC chairman. I believe that his leadership will threaten the reliability of our grid, [and] irreparably damage the coal industry.” Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana also has said she’s not certain if she will vote for Binz. No committee vote has been scheduled yet.

Binz, who has a reputation as a supporter of renewable fuels and who joined in Colorado’s crackdown on coal-fired power generation, ran into some tough questioning last Tuesday at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Energy Committee. Coal interests have lobbied heavily against his nomination. President Obama tapped Binz in late June to succeed FERC Chairman Jon Wellinghoff, who has chaired the agency since March 2009 (see NGI, July 1).

He defended his record on coal-fired power. “You might think with all the rhetoric [that’s been] written about me that I went out with a sledge hammer and personally closed the coal plants” in Colorado, Binz said. Nothing could be further from the truth. The generation plants of Public Service of Colorado are 40% coal, 30% gas-fired and the remaining fueled by renewables and hydro, he said.

Binz also has come under attack for his past comments about natural gas. Binz was questioned by Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) about a remark earlier in his career that natural gas would be a dead end fuel by 2035. Barrasso said if that was Binz’s attitude he might be inclined to slow down or put off the FERC approval process for interstate gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas plants (LNG), since they would be expected to operate well into the future.

Binz said the projects would be judged “on their merits” and not on his personal opinion. He said he was fully supportive of developing natural gas resources. “I have spoken to several LNG exporters and have expressed my interest in making sure that applications make it through the FERC as expeditiously as possible,” Binz said.

He conceded that some of his past comments about natural gas have come back to haunt him, but he noted that they had been taken out of context. “I should take on directly the quote that has been repeated most often and that is I expressed a concern that natural gas could be [at] a ‘dead end’ in 2035.” But that, Binz noted, is only if carbon capture and sequestration technology is not developed or perfected by then.

“I think that there’s a very good chance that the technology will be invented or perfected by that time,” Binz said. He thinks natural gas could be the “near-perfect fuel” for the next couple of decades, and carbon capture and sequestration will make it a “permanently good” fuel.

That remark didn’t pacify Barrasso. “You are saying that the future of natural gas, not just coal, but natural gas, depends on carbon capture and sequestration — a technology that [is] not currently available, not currently economically viable, not commercially viable — may never be for natural gas,” he said.

Murkowski said she had serious concerns about reports that the San Francisco-based GreenTech Action Fund, a political action committee backing renewable energy initiatives, retained a public relations firm to head off Binz’s critics. “This kind of paid effort for and with the cooperation of the nominee should not become the new normal” in the confirmation process. “FERC is an independent agency. It must remain an independent agency,” Murkowski said.

Binz countered that he was “paying no one…I have attempted to operate as independently as possible.”

Opposition to Binz also came from a coalition of conservative and libertarian-leaning organizations. “While it is normal for the president to receive the benefit of the doubt with nominations, some nominations are so troubling that they raise grave concerns. The nomination of Ronald Binz is one of these very troubling nominations,” the groups wrote in a letter to the Senate Energy Committee last Monday.

“The Binz nomination is suffering under the strain of Binz’s own record, the outside lobbying by groups and the clumsy politics of [Senate Majority Leader] Harry Reid,” said a spokesman for American Energy Alliance, one of the signatories to the letter. “It’s unclear how much political capital the White House will want to spend to get Binz through confirmation, and it’s unclear…how much Senate Democrats like Mary Landrieu and Joe Manchin are willing to lose getting Binz through to confirmation.”

The groups believe that a Binz chairmanship would further hamper FERC’s approval of interstate natural gas pipelines and LNG liquefaction facilities. “The FERC approval process takes 12-18 months and costs an estimated $10 million” for LNG facilities. “To date, only one LNG export facility has received FERC approval.” If Binz is confirmed, “he could make those processes [for approval of pipelines and LNG export facilities] even more burdensome, creating another hidden tax and threatening to dim one of the brightest spots in the economy right now, the growth in natural gas, which is lowering energy prices and spurring GDP growth.”

Some FERC observers are concerned that Binz would try to legislate energy policy from the agency. “Binz apparently believes that regulators should not merely execute the laws, but should usurp the role of the legislative branch and legislate. He has said ‘the problem with current regulation is the regulatory process’ and therefore ‘regulation must become a more legislative (as opposed to judicial) process,” the coalition noted.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) also signed the letter, saying that it “does not normally oppose nominations. However, given the very real danger that a Binz-run FERC would present to electricity rates for American citizens, natural gas pipelines, natural gas imports and exports, and the long-running controversy over the Keystone XL pipeline, we felt that it was important to weigh in.” The coalition said that “Binz gave us plenty to worry about in his previous roles as both a pro-renewables advocate and regulator, as he imposed a staunchly expansionist agenda in both cases. As head of Colorado’s Office of Consumer Counsel, Ron Binz encouraged the shutdown [of] the Fort St. Vrain nuclear power station.”

And as chairman of the Colorado Public Utilities Commission, Binz struck a controversial $1.3 billion deal with Xcel Energy to shut down coal plants and convert them to natural gas.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board earlier this month was highly critical of Binz’s past statements on natural gas. “This is a man whose overriding policy motivation is making carbon more expensive so it can be phased out of the U.S. economy. Such thinking ought to scare the daylights out of senators from fossil-fuel states, because it shows how Mr. Binz will operate at FERC.”

Following a similar attack in the Journal earlier this summer (see NGI, Aug. 26), eight Republican and four Democratic ex-FERC commissioners came to Binz’s defense, calling him “a fair and impartial judge.”

In addition to AEA and AFP, other members of the coalition include American Commitment, National Taxpayers Union, The National Center for Public Policy Research, Caesar Rodney Institute, American Tradition Institute, Family Business Defense Council, Independence Institute, Frontiers of Freedom, 60 Plus, Freedom Action, Competitive Enterprise Institute and Positive Growth Alliance.