William & Mary Law School announced it has appointed former FERC Chair Mark Christie as the 2025 Lowance Fellow, a visiting professor of the practice of law and the founding director of the school’s new Center for Energy Law & Policy.
Christie served on FERC for nearly five years and was chair for the last seven months, until this past August. Before that, he was chair of the Virginia State Corporation Commission, on which he served for 17 years. He also previously taught law at the University of Virginia and Virginia Commonwealth University.
“I love the whole process of teaching,” Christie said in an interview Sept. 29. “First of all, you got to learn before you can teach, and so teaching is very educational.”
William & Mary said the new energy law center “will serve as a hub for convening policymakers, scholars and students to address critical issues shaping the future of energy regulation.” Christie said the center offers him a chance to continue working on policy, with its first public activity being a conference scheduled for spring 2026 on how Virginia and the rest of the country can meet the needs of data centers and everyday consumers.
The center also will “host webinars on timely energy issues, sponsor research projects by William & Mary faculty and students, and promote cross-disciplinary collaboration across the university, including opportunities for business and policy students,” the school said.
“We are ground zero for the planet for the challenges of data center development and the reliability and the consumer cost issues that the whole country is dealing with,” Christie said. “Now, how do we pay for these? How do we keep the reliability? So, it’s a perfect place to do this in Virginia and in William & Mary, which is an outstanding law school.”
The return of load growth has put pressure on prices and reliability, which has led to calls for major changes at PJM, the largest RTO in the country and one Christie has tracked his entire career as a regulator. He recently spoke at a forum hosted by Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) where he and other state governors in PJM called for reforms in its governance process. (See related story, PJM Members Confirm 2 Board Nominees; States Call for Governance Overhaul.)
Shapiro and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) had asked that Christie and former FERC Commissioner Allison Clements be named to PJM’s board. The governors raised the issue with Christie shortly after he left FERC, and he said he would have served if asked, but the RTO ended up picking others.
“PJM faces a tremendous political problem, and when I say political, I’m not talking partisan; I’m talking the reality that you’ve got 13 states with obviously very different views about, certainly, what the generation mix ought to be,” Christie said. “So, it’s tough enough to try to come out with something that’s a consensus among the states, but I’m looking to see that the states use the authority we gave them in Order 1920-B, which is to decide on cost allocation, and file that with FERC.”
PJM is making policy calls around issues without giving the elected representatives of its 67 million consumers enough of a voice, Christie said.
Another policy issue that has come up lately and periodically over the past 20 years is the role of the Independent Market Monitor. When Christie was president of the Organization of PJM States Inc., his yearlong tenure was taken up by a complaint states filed trying to preserve the independence of Monitor Joseph Bowring, the result of which was universal rules through FERC Order 719.
But some interests in RTOs do not want IMMs at all. The idea has cropped up occasionally in PJM and just recently at MISO, where Monitor David Patton has clashed with stakeholders and leadership because of his views on transmission expansion. (See MISO Board Orders More Detail into Monitor’s 2026 Budget.)
“I am not usually at a loss for words,” he said. “People that know me would say that it’s very rare that Mark Christie is at a loss for words. I can hardly even think of the words to describe how essential the market monitor is. …
“Consumers are absolutely, totally defenseless and regulators are totally in the dark [without a monitor] because I can tell you from my experience in PJM, I don’t know how many times as a state regulator we got critical information from Dr. Bowring that we had to have to make decisions.”
