Analyze

Strategic plans generated every four years include and highlight FERC motivations, goals, and emphasize key priorities the organization plans on focusing on. The newest FERC Strategic plan FY 2022-2026 demonstrates the organizations shifting focus on environmental implications and environmental justice. Compared to the previous Strategic plans from 2009 till 2022, there have been zero mentions of “environmental justice” or “environmental justice communities”. In the newest 2022-2026 strategic plan there were 24 mentions of “environmental justice” and 11 mentions of “environmental justice communities”. The newest strategic plan focuses on better examining greenhouse gas emissions by revising the analytical framework for evaluating effects of natural gas infrastructure. The newest strategic plan includes an outline to address energy security and reliability given extreme weather events, climate change and new cyber security threats. An additional priority includes improving participation in proceedings, including landowners, environmental justice communities, tribal nations, and members of the public. Their report also includes an emphasis on regulation and compliance with industry. 

The structure in which the FERC is funded is one of particular controversy, which was brought to court in 2016 by the Delaware Riverkeeper Network. The DRN alleged that the way in which the FERC was funded was inherently biased in favor of industry and violated the public's 5th amendment right. The FERC has an appropriated budget set by congress. The FERC raises revenue through the industry it regulates to reimburse and generate funding.  The lawsuit legally sided with the FERC giving the following reasons: the FERC budget has remained consistently the same, the FERC is statutorily required to eliminate under and over recovery of money, and the opposition failed ot prove it's case.

This organization works with the EPA, US Army Corps of Engineers, US Coast Guard, US Department of Energy, US Fish and Wildlife Services and other agencies on Environmental Impact Statements for new Infrastructure.

As of April 2022 the commissioners include, Commissioner James Danly, Commissioner Allison Clements, Commissioner Mark C. Christie, and Commissioner Willie L. Phillips, and Chairman, Richard Glick. Chairman and Commissioners are appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. Commissioners and Chair serve staggered five year terms and not more than three of the five commissioners, including the chair, can be from the same political party. Additional staffers include ~1500 employees (based on FY 2019). Staffers fulfill supplemental positions such as lawyers, engineers, economists, biologist, ecologist etc. The chairman and commissioners are at the top of the organizational structure. Administrative, Regulatory, and Litigation functions all follow. There are 13 specific departments such as the Office of Administrative Litigation, Office of Energy Policy and Innovation, Office of the External Affairs etc. all fall into one of the three functions.

FERC's mission According to the FERC government website: “Assist consumers in obtaining reliable, safe, secure, and economically efficient energy services at a reasonable cost through appropriate regulatory and market means, and collaborative efforts.” This organization as of April 2022 is operational.

“Enterprising attempts at incorporating local communities ‘on the margins’ into the ‘universal rationality of good business practice’ (Rajak 2011a: 17). In doing so, CSR activities seek to maintain low levels of resistance to corporate proposals.” p72. Also cites Welker2009_CorporateSecurityBegins. The Lord2016 is also a good example of this. 

An attempt to constrain critique with a survey of feedback about how to do the presentation of information of the scientists “better” and “more simply” 

“Members of the community, while criticizing the adequacy of scientific reporting as not telling the whole truth, accept to some extent the proposition that further information can be found, and that thereby they may possess this knowledge. However, focusing on technology as a form of knowledge and seeking to know its dimensions avoids questions regarding how things come to count as “knowledge and “not knowledge.” in the first place (Riles 2004). Insistence of better transparency allows for the possibility that transparency might in fact be possible: it “leaves the world itself intact. Intentionally or not, it depends on maintaining the absolute difference between representations and the world they represent” (Mitchell 2002:4).” p78

Policy brochures to publicize mitigation, “sustainable” activities, and community investment programs. Global companies often anticipate/precede the local government regulations. 

Use the fact that the government’s actual regulations are obscenely loose or nonexistent to say they are “Much more responsible than the law dictates” - a quote from a community liaison officer she interviewed. P71. Even if their levels are bad they can hide behind being “Better” than the standards. 

Signing the contract is a symbolic acknowledgement of the indigenous people’s rights to the land and to bargain with the company. (Though, of course, their water is still being totally wrecked, and the company lies to them). 

Lots of science - data - new technology to measure more accurately - scientists presenting, holding the reporting meeting

Tried to use photo evidence - but it was rejected because the indigenous people in the audience recognized that they were using the same photos from three years ago - which then caused additional “rejected the authenticity of the material that was being presented” -p75

Using the word “stable” (estable) to say it’s ok or that the impact is negligible - when in fact this can’t be known and it’s deeply improbable that it’s true - and even if the damage is “Stable” and not escalating, it is probably already at an unacceptable level. 

The manager of social relations person put his body in between the questioning indigenous person rejecting the truth value of the data and the scientist. 

Asking for feedback -because they know the community members are suspicious of their scientific data

The visit to the new drilling site - though it seemed like they were secretly extracting and they didn’t tell much and they couldn’t do anything about the fact that the corporation had already drilled way more than what they initially proposed they needed to drill to “monitor”

The interactions the corporation has with the indigenous people and the relationships they try to make are attempts to morally legitimate the extraction

They are giving the “gift of truth” about their activities with their reporting, they feel like they are conceding to their demands when they do the reporting and take them on tours, the investment in the community relations teams and the workshops to educate about science and having meals with the community members - I think the corporate actors are always aware that their goal is to quell resistance, but they might think that their presence is actually good for the indigenouspeople in in the long run once they start providing funds for community development and conceding to these demands and giving them “education”

“Company reporting on the environmental and social impacts of mining activities may by its very existence thus be projected as a “moral good”, an open gesture of asserted high moral value” p71 - cites a bunch of sources including Rajak2011_TheatresOfVirtue

Reporting to/ consulting with the community is one of the central “moral mechanisms” of CSR, and going to these reporting meetings is important to the people who are “impacted community” members. -  “The discourse of transparency is thus central to the moral framework of engagements between corporate actors and communities” -p72. 

Another way to say the same things: “Such CSR instruments - social accounting, community development investment, and transparency reporting - establish principles of “good business” and are used to make the claim of corporations acting as “agents of world benefit” (Maak and Pless 2009).” -p72 The source is a journal of business ethics. 

Standardization - “measures of fact and accounting assert that company activity is best made visible and internationally comparable (see also Li 2011)”. P72. The source is a Focaal article from the same issue as the Rajak. 

“Concerns with translocal legibility and universal administrative acceptability and the focus on rational economic behavior linked to audit have created an ethic of the visible, the transparent, as the highest standard of governance.” p72. She cites Garsten and Lindh de Montoya 2008, Peck and Ticknell 2002. 

The community people do think it’s an improvement to have any relationship with the corporation. They’re frustrated in part during their tour of the new digging that they won because only 2 people were there and one was a junior scientist and the other was from the contractors 

There’s parallel solutions on both sides (the tech, better info presentation vs participation in scientific monitoring, own experts) to increase participation and increase truth

In the case of Chile, to the extent that they exist, the laws for environmental mitigation/regulation are not really enforced. So any “responsible” actions are “lustered with voluntarily” and done totally on the corporation’s own terms. 

“social accounting” & “audit” techniques and institutions - they are “created by global business in concert with governments and civil society” . “performance requirements”