"President Barack Obama’s nominee to head a little-known energy commission has become the latest appointee drawn into the contentious debate over climate change."

"The nomination of Ron Binz to be chairman of the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has sparked enough opposition that environmentalists have hired a public-relations firm to aid his Senate confirmation. Binz has drawn the ire of coal-industry interests for advocating policies that mining companies said encouraged the conversion of power plants to natural gas when he served as Colorado’s top utility regulator.

'He’s not a regulator, he’s an activist,' Amy Oliver Cooke, director of the Energy Policy Center at the Independence Institute in Denver that advocates for limited government, said in an interview."

Brian Wingfield reports for Bloomberg News August 20, 2013. [2]