A top clean energy trade group warned that the window for lawmakers to pass meaningful permitting reform is almost closed, with Congress just weeks away from breaking for August recess and no deal in hand.
“We think the window of opportunity there is starting to close this Congress,” American Clean Power CEO Jason Grumet told reporters on Tuesday.
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Lawmakers have long sought a deal on major legislation to overhaul the federal permitting process to accelerate approvals for a wide variety of new energy and infrastructure projects, such as pipelines, transmission lines, and highways. The Trump administration is eager to boost energy production to lower electricity prices and help win the race for artificial intelligence. Democrats, meanwhile, are hoping to facilitate the development of carbon-free energy sources.
Bipartisan legislation passed the House in December, but an ongoing feud between the Trump administration and Democrats over the administration’s decision to stall permits for renewable energy projects has delayed any similar text from being introduced in the Senate.
As of the first week of July, some smaller bills had been put forward in the upper chamber, but nothing had been endorsed by the environment and public works committee and the energy and natural resources committee, which will have to sign off on any permitting-related package headed to the floor for a vote.
“Permitting reform is absolutely critical to achieving clean energy goals, but absent some greater engagement of the administration around the kind of key principles of technology neutrality and permit certainty, it’s looking to us unlikely — or less likely — that Congress will be able to act in the next several months,” Grumet said.
Grumet added that, while some in Washington, D.C., have begun floating the idea of passing permitting reform during a lame-duck period after a Democratic victory in the November midterm elections, that is a “very freighted strategy.”
“I think imagining that a newly elected Democratic House is going to want to pass legislation that was developed without their involvement or with very little involvement is just — it’s always a very, very tough argument to make,” Grumet said.
He explained that the clean energy industry was hoping and anticipating that language — from key Senate negotiators such as EPW chairwoman Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) and ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) — would have been put forth before the Fourth of July.
“If you look at major pieces of legislation moving forward in an election year, you usually have seen texts by now,” Grumet said.
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When asked if it’s impossible to see any significant progress before the August recess, Grumet still offered a somewhat optimistic view.
“It is not impossible, in fact, I’d say it is the most likely major piece of energy legislation that could pass,” he said. “It’s just that we feel much more optimistic if there was text that had been already shared publicly.”
