For decades, the federal government’s byzantine and overlapping permitting regimes for infrastructure and energy projects have stymied construction. Getting a permit under laws passed in the mid-20th century usually requires years of environmental reviews and judicial challenges, ballooning builders’ costs and making many projects infeasible. This year, Congress can finally rationalize the dreadful system it has made.
A bipartisan team of senators — including the leading members of both the energy and public works committees — has released the first promising bill aimed at comprehensive permitting reform in a very long time. The shared concern, according to negotiator Mike Lee (R., Utah), is “to make it easier in America to build things.” Hear, hear!
Republican lawmakers have long sought to ease permitting for fossil-fuel production, while Democrats have wished to do the same only for clean energy. They joined for the rare congressional deal that improves matters in both directions. Government should set a level playing field for different energy sources without putting its thumb on the scale, allowing consumers and investors to choose what works best. So long as clean energy isn’t subsidized — last year’s reconciliation law phased out nearly all preferential tax credits — there is no reason that wind and solar should face harsher permitting than oil and gas.
The bill limits environmental reviews across the board. That should benefit all projects that cross state lines or sit on federal land, from highways and bridges to pipelines and mines. Crucially, it tackles the three-headed monster of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the Clean Water Act, and the Endangered Species Act. Reviews under these statutes would be narrowed, streamlined, and centralized, with strict time limits imposed on environmental lawsuits challenging approvals.
Strengthening the electric grid receives special attention. Currently, developers of interstate transmission lines must go through each state’s separate permitting rules, which operate on different timelines and often reach different conclusions. The bill would shift authority up to the federal level to unify the process. It would also lift barriers to particular energy sources, such as geothermal and hydropower. Novel protections would help open the grid to independent generators and transmission developers.
Negotiations in the Senate were previously scuttled when the Trump administration moved to halt offshore wind projects that were already under construction. Lawmakers have now responded to this executive freewheeling, as the legislation would restrict agencies from interfering with authorizations after they are granted. It would also make it harder for presidents to discriminate against certain energy sources when issuing permits, rebuking Trump’s attempt to block new wind farms. These safeguards would apply equally to a future Democratic administration biased against fossil fuels.
If Republicans had drafted the legislation alone, they likely would have included more provisions from their 2023 legislation aimed at expanding oil and gas production — though much of the general permitting changes from that bill did get in. Securing energy and other resource-extraction leases against presidential stonewalling, of the kind Joe Biden engaged in, remains worthwhile. A rewrite of nuclear-power regulations to bring more reactors online would have also been a welcome inclusion.
Yet compromise is a political necessity for any lasting reform effort, and to the extent the Senate has moved the ball forward on permitting, it has done so overwhelmingly toward deregulation and growth. For once, Congress has taken initiative and done serious work to improve the nation’s laws — and even to rein in executive discretion.
When they return from the midterm elections, lawmakers will have an elusive opportunity to clear roadblocks for infrastructure and energy projects of all sorts. They should seize it.