Bernard McNamee

Bernard McNamee served in the Trump Administration’s Department of Energy as Executive Director of the Office of Policy and Deputy General Counsel for Energy Policy. In 2018, he was nominated and confirmed as a commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)—the independent agency led by a bipartisan group of five commissioners and charged with ensuring “reliable, safe, secure, and economically efficient energy services at a reasonable cost.” A former senior advisor to Senator Ted Cruz and chief of staff to ultraconservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, McNamee is a longtime fossil fuel advocate and climate change denier. McNamee’s tenure was marked by his overt partisanship and his enabling of Donald Trump’s most consequential and destructive oil and energy policies. McNamee authored the Department of Energy (DOE) chapter of Project 2025’s Mandate for Leadership.

In his Project 2025 chapter, McNamee argues that the U.S. should continue to develop new nuclear warheads, reject ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (which prohibits nuclear tests), and prepare to test new nuclear weapons “in response to adversary nuclear developments.” This is in line with the first Trump Administration, which dismantled anti-nuclear commitments including withdrawing from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty and the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, failing to reach an agreement with Russia to extend New START – the only treaty regulating strategic nuclear weapons between U.S. and Russia – and most notably, reneging on the Iran nuclear deal.

McNamee also attacks renewable energy policy, “…ideologically driven government policies have thrust the United States into a new energy crisis… The new energy crisis is caused not by a lack of resources, but by extreme “green” policies.” McNamee also goes on advise that the upcoming administration should, “Support [the] repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests…” and “Eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports.” Other suggestions McNamee makes, among many, include eliminating carbon capture and storage programs, eliminating energy efficiency standards for appliances, and eliminating the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration.

McNamee first joined the Trump administration as a political appointee in 2017, serving as deputy general counsel for energy policy at the U.S. DOE. He left the administration in February 2018, and for four months, served as a director of the energy policy division at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative think tank and a Project 2025 advisory board member. McNamee rejoined the administration in June to serve as executive director of the Office of Policy at DOE, a role he held until December 2018 when he was nominated by President Trump to serve as one of the five commissioners of FERC.

McNamee’s nomination was controversial. Opposed by many sitting senators and civil society organizations, McNamee was widely seen as the most overtly political person to potentially serve on FERC in decades, immediately bringing his ability to fairly approach renewable energy into question. Adding to doubt about McNamee, at a TPPF event in late 2018, McNamee was recorded saying fossil fuels are “key to our prosperity” and a “clean environment.” At the same event, he went on to say “renewables, when they come on and off, it screws up the whole physics of the grid.” McNamee was ultimately confirmed by the Senate in a 50-49 vote.

While at FERC, McNamee was widely perceived as deferential to the political will of Donald Trump and a proponent of the fossil fuel industry’s special interest. During his tenure, McNamee’s actions and policy stances were a clear indication of his alignment with Donald Trump and the fossil fuel industry. Notably, McNamee argued that FERC does not have the authority to consider the potential effects of downstream or upstream greenhouse gas emissions from their gas pipeline project permitting. McNamee advocated for the fast-tracking of liquified natural gas export facilities, and as a result, got the long delayed Venture Global Calcasieu Pass LNG export facility in Louisiana approved.

Today, McNamee is a partner at oil and gas law and lobbying firm, McGuire Woods LLC, and a senior advisor at the firm’s consulting arm, McGuireWoods Consulting. Between 2021 and 2024, a timeframe that overlaps with McNamee’s employment at McGuire, the group has been paid $770,000 in lobbying fees by Dominion Energy Inc., a Virginia based energy company, and approximately $900,000 in 2022 alone by Donald Trump’s Save America political action committee. Other notable clients of McGuireWoods include Vice President Mike Pence in the DOJ Special Counsel’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Boeing, Edison Electric Institute (EEI), Exelon, and PSEG.

In his 2018 Earth Day op-ed, McNamee wrote, “America is blessed with an abundant supply of affordable natural gas, oil and coal. When we celebrate Earth Day, we should consider the facts, not the political narrative, and reflect about how the responsible use of America’s abundant resources of natural gas, oil and coal have dramatically improved the human condition — and continue to do so.”

This profile has been updated.