Time has run out for substantive permitting reform to happen this year. The must-pass National Defense Authorization Act came and went without any inclusion of regulatory change. Now, negotiators have given up on including it in the continuing resolution funding bill that must pass this week. Permitting reform is not just an economic concern. It is a national security concern, and Congress would have been wise to get a deal done this year that would have allowed industries the vital time they need to build out our energy infrastructure.
Once seen as a purely partisan matter, the role burdensome federal regulations play in preventing the construction of vital energy infrastructure has recently become a bipartisan concern as Democrats have realized their goal of a transition to a clean energy economy requires not just building solar, wind, and geothermal projects, but also massive new investments in transmission lines and electrical substations.
Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced bipartisan legislation earlier this year that would have eased regulatory burdens for the construction of new transmission facilities in exchange for mandated oil and gas lease sales on selected public lands. Crucially, their Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 exempted transmission projects, as well as geothermal projects, from the National Environmental Policy Act, a 1970s-era regulatory framework that has been weaponized by environmental activists to delay and discontinue thousands of infrastructure projects nationwide.
When NEPA first passed, the Environmental Impact Statements the law required federal agencies to write for each project ran just 15 pages. Now, after decades of litigation, the typical EIS runs 600 pages and takes an average of over four years to complete, assuming no one objects to the EIS and then sues in federal court to stop the project. While agencies typically eventually win these cases, the litigation can take years to complete, often causing many projects to fall apart as financing dries up.
While it is commendable that the Manchin-Barrasso language acknowledges this problem by exempting certain projects from NEPA’s requirements, it still leaves the highly flawed NEPA process in place for every other agency action. Port dredging, forest fire management, transportation construction, and even new housing development are every bit as strangled by NEPA as geothermal and transmission projects. They are in desperate need of regulatory relief, too. Negotiators should exempt as many activities from NEPA as possible.
Unfortunately, a much-needed thorough rewrite of the federal government’s permitting process will take time. There is only so much the Senate parliamentarian will allow Senate Republicans to accomplish on permitting reform on a partisan basis through the reconciliation process. Real permitting reform is months, if not years, away. In the meantime, the nation’s electrical grid needs projects exempted from NEPA so they can be built now.
Even before Big Tech began sucking up so much electricity from the grid to power its data and artificial intelligence processing centers, our nation’s electricity grid had become a national security vulnerability. In war games conducted by the Pentagon, it has been shown that the entire grid could be brought to collapse by the selective targeting of just a few substations. As China looks to assert itself in the Pacific and throughout the world, this is not an acceptable vulnerability.
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By passing limited NEPA carveouts now, those who want broader NEPA reform can demonstrate that NEPA really is the key hangup preventing much-needed investment in our nation’s energy infrastructure. Once that is proven, then let politicians on the left vote against regulatory reform that would then also lower housing prices, lower transportation costs, and prevent forest fires.
Now that this Congress has failed to pass permitting reform, it will surely be a major priority for the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled House and Senate next year.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
