The Democrat-controlled Congress in 2022 adopted two massive bills—the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act (IIJA)—that earmarked $700 billion in infrastructure-related federal investment to spur President Joe Biden’s transition from fossil fuels to renewable “green energies.”
That money is beginning to matriculate through states, counties, and cities with local government planners approving projects that are now getting off drawing boards and breaking ground nationwide
Or, at least, they should be.
Democrats—many long allied with unbending environmentalist-preservationist groups, and climate activists—now face an obstacle of their own design in getting President Biden’s “rush to green energy” off the ground: the multi-agency federal permitting morass where, apparently, even “green” projects idle for years in regulatory purgatory.
“We’ve laid out tremendous amounts of money, which potentially we could invest in infrastructure, in the energy transition to make domestic energy more reliable, safer, and cleaner,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) said. “But that'll never happen if we don’t reform our processes because we have so much to do, and so little time, and we don’t want that money to sit in the bank. We don’t want to waste it on process.”
Mr. Peters, speaking with Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah) at an Aug. 9 United States Chamber of Commerce ‘Common Grounds’ virtual presentation hosted by Chamber Senior Vice President for Government Affairs Evan Jenkins, said while permitting reform is a top priority for now-majority House Republicans, it must also be aggressively advanced from “an environmental, climate perspective.”
“It’s really important for [Democrats] to push permitting reform,” he said. “That’s not something that comes naturally to Democrats, I must say. But, if we’re really serious about dealing with these problems, I think it’s really necessary.”
When Opposites Align
Mr. Peters, an environmental lawyer who served as San Diego City Council President before his 2012 election to Congress, serves on the House Budget and Energy & Commerce committees.Mr. Curtis, a three-term incumbent who first joined Congress in a 2017 special election, sits on the House Energy & Commerce Committee, where he is vice chair of its Energy, Climate, & Grid Security Subcommittee, and on the House Natural Resources Committee, where he is vice chair of its Federal Lands Subcommittee.
And both cited broadband, electrical transmission, and nuclear power as examples of infrastructure advancements where the money has been approved, the investment has been made, but the permitting process has been ensnared in regulatory limbo.
“I think if you look at a number of years, pick the year 2050. Every goal that we have, whether it’s energy-related or climate-related, is being blocked by [permitting] problems, and I don’t think we can accomplish any of our goals if we don’t deal with permitting reform,” said Mr. Curtis, who founded the 80-plus House Republican Climate Caucus of GOP reps who acknowledge climate change is real.
“We should just step back for a second to recognize we’ve become used to the idea of things taking two years to process, or four years to process,” Mr. Peters said. “It seems when we’re in competition with the rest of the world, that’s just not acceptable.”
Red Tape Stunting Grid Growth
That’s particularly acute when it comes to modernizing and expanding the nation’s electrical grid. According to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the United States must grow its electricity transmission systems by 60 percent by 2030—and may need to triple current capacity by 2050—to accommodate a growing renewable energy sector needed to meet increasing power demand for electric vehicles (EVs) and electric home heating.“All that’s going to take time for permitting. We ought to find ways to expedite it,” Mr. Peters said. “You can build all the wind in Texas and all the solar in Arizona, but if you can’t get it to Detroit, to Chicago, where they need it, you’re kind of missing the boat. So I think as Democrats and as climate advocates, we have to recognize that about 95 percent of the projects in line to be built, energy projects across the country, are clean ones. And so, let’s build the backbone. Let’s build a transmission grid that will support that.”
To “triple the size of the grid in about 30 years,” as the DOE predicts will be necessary, “that’s 200,000 miles of wind every year. And we’ve been building them at a rate of 1,800 a year, or 18,000 over 10 years. So, we have a big leap to make,” he added.
Both cited permitting reform included in HR 3746, the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 (FRA), or the debt-ceiling deal between House Republicans and President Biden, as a good first step, although they agreed much more is needed—and needed quickly, perhaps as amendments to one or more of the 12 “must-pass” annual appropriations bills or as a stand-alone measure.
The FRA was adopted on May 31 in the House, 314–177, and on June 2 in the Senate, 63–36. It was signed by President Biden a day later. Among its many components, the debt-ceiling deal streamlines the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) environmental review process, sets time limits for agency review, and narrows agency scope.
Those shaved timelines include a two-year limit on conducting Environmental Impact Statements (EIS) and a one-year limit for environmental assessments, with deadlines extended only if necessary for completion. It caps EISs to 150 pages, or up to 300 for statements of “extraordinary complexity,” and environmental assessments at 75 pages.
Additionally, the FRA commissions studies of the United States power grid and makes energy storage projects eligible for the streamlined federal permitting process.
“We got something done—a good start,” Mr. Curtis said. “But I think we need to do a lot more, and it’s very possible, but it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck thing. And everything has to go exactly right in order to actually get the president to sign it.”
Business, Industry: Lobby Thy Reps
Mr. Curtis supports the range of permitting reforms included in the House adopted HR 1, The Lower Costs Energy Act, which is unlikely to gain much traction in the Democrat-led Senate. Nevertheless, in many instances, committees have done their “spadework” in vetting and readying proposed reforms either as amendments to other bills or as standing measures.“Sometimes, I worry that … when they say permitting reform, it means different things to different people,” he said. “And we’ve got to make sure that we’re all talking about the same issue, but I feel a tremendous momentum. And a lot of optimism that we can get something done on permitting reform” during this two-year congressional term.
Both called on business and industry leaders to lobby for permitting reform to untether to infrastructure investments that Congress has already approved.
“The business side is really critical for us, and you should all … act as if you’re educators for congressional members about how important this is,” Mr. Peters said, calling on “climate groups” and “academics” to also make the case “for permit reform—all the stuff we have to build, whether it’s utility-scale solar, wind, offshore wind, hydrogen pipelines, direct-air capture—all that stuff needs to happen and to happen fast. There’s money for it, there’s just a time pressure.”
“We need to hear a lot from industry,” Mr. Curtis agreed. “We really need all facets of industry at the table, pointing out what exactly the impediments are and ideas on how we get past those, those blockages.”
That’s a particularly acute need with the nuclear energy industry, he said. “Right now, it takes far too long to permit a nuclear plant, and we need the nuclear industry engaged in permitting reform and giving us ideas on how we can shorten that timeline,” he said.
Mr. Peters and Mr. Curtis spent much of the half-hour discussion pointing out how much bipartisan momentum there is in reforming permitting procedures and trimming some regulations.
But there are points of discord, such as over pipelines and in what Republicans say is an over-emphasis on incentivizing renewable “green energies” at the expense of oil and gas development.
“From a political perspective, Democrats are going to have a hard time supporting more permit reform for pipelines,” Mr. Peters said before sounding very much like a Republican by noting that some controversial projects, such as the Keystone pipeline, are rightfully permitted and regulated by states under the Natural Gas Act from the 1940s.
“It is an interstate thing, and I think people understand that, that you know, states have to stand behind the federal government and getting that system built out just like they were with the highways,” he said.
Mr. Curtis, in offering a “Republican perspective on why oil and gas and pipelines are important to us,” said he and many other GOP House members represent congressional districts where “traditional fossil fuel industries” drive the economy.
“And I want to be really clear as I represent a ‘fossil fuel county’ and, really, a state that, they understand they have to become clean, cleaner, and then eventually no emissions at all,” he said.
“And they’re game for that challenge, but they don’t want to be ruled out of the game simply because they’re fossil fuel. I think if we can change that paradigm, we can challenge that industry with becoming cleaner, and my experience is, they’re getting up for that challenge that, even getting to 2035 with net zero emissions, is something they’re game for.”
Not Wanted: ‘Never-Back-Downers’
The reps said that among the keys in advancing permitting reform will be accommodation—overcoming the “never back downers”—and convincing skeptics on both sides of the aisle that slashing red tape will green-light needed projects better and faster.Mr. Curtis said Republicans must find a way—by their own words and actions—to improve how their arguments are perceived.
Mr. Peters said many environmental groups are angry about the FRA’s NEPA reforms because they view some of the 50-year landmark laws and regulations “like they are biblical, like they came from Moses on stone tablets.”
But times have changed, and so should environmental laws and regulations, he said.
“I’ve been trying to make the point that those were defense laws back in the 1970s, when we were making a lot of mistakes environmentally, that it was good to put on the brakes, slow things down, and make sure we consider the effects of things before we built them,” Mr. Peters said. “And that was the appropriate posture for that time—defense. Now, we’re on offense as climate activists, and we’ve got to figure out a way to make this go faster, and pick up more yards.
“Stuff just can’t take this long,” he said. “You have to be concerned that we’re squandering all these resources, time, and money on process, and I think it’s time to come to grips with that. And I hope that we will. I am pretty optimistic that we will.”
