In a long-awaited move to bolster permitting and grid development, U.S. Senators advanced the bipartisan Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
“What we have here is a really good step in American energy independence,” Sen. Barrasso told E&E News.
A Lengthy Process
Permitting reform represents one of the most challenging policy topics in Washington, D.C. Broadly, it encompasses how the government approves new energy infrastructure. Sticking points include the desire for faster build-outs and less stalling on new energy projects but deciding which projects get championed. Fossil fuels, renewables, and transmission lines will all be affected by a reform process.
It is clear why reform is needed. While the spirit behind the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their proposed actions and seek public comment, is praiseworthy, it leads to extremely lengthy processes before projects can even be greenlit.
In 2020, the Council on Environmental Quality, which oversees the implementation of NEPA, found that the average length of an environmental impact statement across agencies was 575 pages for draft versions and 661 pages for final ones. They take an average of 4.5 years to complete and even longer if litigation is involved.
Photo Courtesy Pattern Energy
Lawsuits regarding the information included in the assessment or permitting can help determine if a project is harmful but can also unintentionally delay good ones. According to the United States Department of Justice, NEPA “is the most frequently litigated federal environmental statute. A 2020 study estimated that, between 2001 and 2013, plaintiffs challenged one in 450 agency actions taken to comply with NEPA, with an average of 115 NEPA cases annually.”
Plus, while NEPA does not include a statute of limitations, courts have found that NEPA cases are governed by the Administrative Procedure Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2401(a), stating that “every civil action commenced against the United States shall be barred unless the complaint is filed within six years after the right of action first accrues.”
Essentially, plaintiffs have a long time to file a claim under NEPA against the government — six years. Energy projects can be held up, even after construction has started.
A prime example of the lengthy timelines for energy projects is the 550-mile SunZia transmission line running between Arizona and New Mexico. The idea was proposed in 2006, but the Bureau of Land Management did not advance it until May 2023, 17 years later. Meanwhile, the application for the 125-mile Ten West Link transmission line between Arizona and California was filed in 2015. In response to its groundbreaking last year, Rep. Dan Crenshaw noted in a committee meeting, “We put a man on the moon in less than that.”
Photo Courtesy Ten West Link
The History of Permitting Reform
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia introduced the Energy Independence and Security Act to speed up such projects in September 2022, shortly after the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) was passed into law.
“No matter what you want to build, whether it’s transmission pipelines or hydropower dams, more often than not, it takes too long and drives up costs. … The bottom line is how much suffering and how much pain do you want to inflict on the American people for the time being?” Manchin said in a press release.
On Dec. 15 of the same year, the Senate didn’t add an amendment containing Sen. Manchin’s proposal to the National Defense Authorization Act. The vote was split, 47–47, with 60 votes needed for it to pass. Some said the legislation went too far in limiting reviews, and others said it didn’t go far enough in shortening their timelines. So, the proposed legislation was returned to the drawing board.
Photo Courtesy Senator Joe Manchin
Now, Sen. Manchin is back, and Sen. John Barrasso is working alongside him. Together, they are the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. On July 22, they introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
In the press release, Sen. Manchin noted that the bill is a “commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation.” It came together “after over a year of holding hearings in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, thoughtfully considering input from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and engaging in good faith negotiations,” Manchin said.
Additionally, the legislation contains pieces of the Streamlining Powerlines Essential to Electric Demand (SPEED) and Reliability Act and the Building Integrated Grids With Inter-Regional Energy Supply (BIG WIRES) Act.
Both of these proposals were introduced by Sen. John Hickenlooper and Rep. Scott Peters.
Rep. Peters thanked them in a press release, saying he was: “encouraged to see they included bold, meaningful reforms to transmission permitting and planning in their legislation,” but concluded that “while this is a strong first step, there is still much work to be done.”
In our next piece, we will go beyond the origins of this legislation.
