Congress created the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in 1974 as an independent agency with the mandate to regulate commodity futures and option markets in the United States. The agency’s mandate has been renewed and expanded several times since then, most recently by the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. Today, the CFTC assures the economic utility of the futures markets by encouraging their competitiveness and efficiency, protecting market participants against fraud, manipulation, and abusive trading practices, and by ensuring the financial integrity of the clearing process. Through effective oversight, the CFTC enables the futures markets to serve the important function of providing a means for price discovery and offsetting price risk. The Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee (formerly the Energy Markets Advisory Committee) was created in 2008 to advise the Commission on important new developments in energy and environmental futures markets that may raise new regulatory issues, and the appropriate regulatory response to ensure market integrity and competition, and protect consumers. The committee has a charter regarding energy and environmental markets