Former Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm announced on Thursday that she will be joining the boards of directors for Southern California Edison Company and its parent corporation Edison International, one of the largest utility companies in the U.S. This comes just six months after Granholm’s Department of Energy awarded $600 million to a consortium of California utilities, including Southern California Edison. 

During her tenure at the DOE, Granholm was accused of a number of ethics violations, including conflicts of interest and using her official position to promote companies that she had a financial stake or relationship with. Nonetheless, despite the widespread reporting of her controversial tenure, she was never charged or disciplined for any wrongdoing.

Early praise, later investigative reporting

Following her nomination and through her confirmation hearings, the legacy media showered Granholm with favorable press, calling her a “champion” of “clean” energy policies and the climate agenda. Despite the early praise by climate-focused news publications, her tenure was marred by controversy and ethics questions. 

In May 2021, four months after Granholm’s confirmation hearing, it was reported that she had held shares in Proterra, an electric bus company that the Biden-Harris administration had heavily promoted. According to the Associated Press, she told congress in 2023 that “she mistakenly provided false information about her family’s stock holdings” in testimony that year. Graholm had by then divested of those shares, earning a profit of $1.6 million, according to the Washington Free Beacon. 

In April 2021, Granholm had told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she owned no individual stocks and only invested in mutual funds. In February 2023, U.S. ethics officials, The Wall Street Journal reported, warned top officials at the Energy Department, including Granholm, that they or their family members owned stocks that could violate conflict-of-interest rules. 

In June of 2023, Granholm confirmed to the Committee on Energy & Natural Resources that she had owned stocks in six companies, which U.S. ethics officials had judged to be “non-conflicting.” Her husband had a previously undisclosed investment in Ford Motor Company. She said in a letter to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee that she had “mistakenly” testified she didn’t own any individual stocks. The committee took no further action.