Bernard McNamee

Birthday: 1967

Hometown: Unknown

Primary residence: Washington, DC

Current role: 

• Author of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership” Chapter 12 on Department of Energy and Related Commissions

• Partner at McGuireWoods (advises fossil fuel companies) 

Net worth: At least $25 million (WealthX)

Annual salary: Unknown

Education: 

• BA in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia (1985 - 1989)

• JD from Emory University School of Law (1990 - 1993)

Board memberships, affiliations, and roles:

• Member of The Federalist Society of Law and Public Policy Studies

Past roles: 

• Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Donald Trump (December 2018 - September 2020)

• Executive Director of the Office of Policy in the US Department of Energy (June 2018 - December 2018)

• Director of Life:Powered at the Texas Public Policy Foundation

• Chief of Staff for the Office of the Attorney General of Texas (January 2015 - December 2015)

• Senior Domestic Policy Advisor for Senator Ted Cruz (July 2013 - November 2014)

Fun facts: 

• He has spent so much of his life working that he “forgot to develop a hobby.”

Lobbying against climate action

• Bernard McNamee has focused his career on systematically dismantling the renewable energy transition and furthering harmful greenhouse gas emissions. 

• In his chapter of Project 2025’s “Mandate for Leadership,” Bernard McNamee outlines a path for the next conservative president to use the Department of Energy, which McNamee previously worked for, to back the fossil fuel industry and impede renewable energy production. 

• As a lawyer for McGuireWoods Consulting, McNamee continues to represent the interests of the fossil fuel industry as he remains a strategy and policy councilor for the energy industry

Political conflicts of interest

• Bernard McNamee has worked for a variety of political and government offices throughout his career, each one prioritizing the interests of fossil fuel companies and the energy status quo over well-backed science and the will of the public. 

• McNamee has made clear his disregard for the renewable energy sector, despite the evidence in its favor.

• At the Department of Energy, McNamee’s Salary was $179,000 a year

• McNamee’s income at McGuireWoods consulting is not publicly available, however WealthX estimates he has a net worth of at least $4.5 million

• Bernard McNamee is a major bureaucratic player for the fossil fuel industry. McNamee helps write, promote, and defend energy policies on the side of fossil fuels. McNamee’s role in the architecture of carbon capital is intentionally under-acknowledged, as he serves as a long-term policy and legal advisor for pro-fossil fuel initiatives. McNamee is not the face of any anti-climate organizations, but his influence is pervasive in energy politics across the country. 

• DeSmog has explicitly named Bernard McNamee a “climate change denier” in an article about his confirmation as a commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Various groups including environmental activists, public health organizations, and elected leaders “strongly opposed” Trump’s nomination of McNamee for the role. Sheldon Whitehouse, a democratic Senator for Rhode Island, called out McNamee’s connections to the Koch brothers and posted on X that, of Trump’s nominations, “#McNamee is conceivably the worst.”

• After a video surfaced of McNamee criticizing renewable energy and climate science, Joe Kennedy III took to X to comment on the matter: “...Bernard McNamee will choose fossil fuels over the future of our planet every time… Now, let’s remember the name of every Senator who chose to follow his path.” 

  • Kennedy’s post received 1.6K likes and 84 replies. 

• The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published an article in December 2018 urging the Senate to reject McNamee’s nomination, citing his bias for fossil fuels as a means for disqualification. 

  • The UCS published another article the month prior, further criticizing McNamee’s eligibility for the role. 

  • UCS also released an article in October of the same year, listing three main reasons for why McNamee isn’t the right choice for the FERC.

• McNamee helped build Rick Perry’s $34 billionk proposal on coal and nuclear bailout and was called out by Sierra Club for “refusal to rescue himself from decisions” involved in the bailout plan. 

• Kenneth Cook, President of the Environmental Working Group, also commented on McNamee’s coal bailout scheme in a press release: “... we don’t need a FERC commissioner who endorses the Trump administration’s schemes to keep the dying coal and nuclear industries on life support.”

• There were three ongoing protests during McNamee’s first meeting at the FERC, one of which could be heard outside the meeting room. The protests were in response to McNamee’s “recusal over concerns he may not remain impartial with agenda items related to grid resilience.”

• “I agree that the climate’s changing, and that man has a role in it.” –McNamee, 2020 

• “I think there’s been a sense that I’m anti-renewable or that at one time I was. I’m not anti-renewable.” –McNamee, 2020 

• “Hydraulic fracturing and directional drilling suddenly brought about the American energy renaissance. And I would argue that that’s helped us integrated more renewables, because it’s allowed us to balance the system out by making sure that we can integrate renewables more efficiently and be able to take advantage of them because of the flexibility that you have in natural gas.” –McNamee, 2020 

• “When I was 26 and started doing policy work, the world was black-and-white. I knew what was right, and everybody else was wrong. But I’m in my 50s now, and I realize there’s usually different points of view, and it’s a little bit gray in the middle. And so there’s not often a clear right or wrong answer. It’s trying to get to what’s the best answer with the facts and the law that you have before you.” –McNamee, 2020

• Said fossil fuels are “key to our way of life” and renewable energy “screws up the whole physics of the grid” in February 2018

• Described lawsuits between environmental groups and the fossil fuel industry as a “constant battle between liberty and tyranny” in February 2018