America is entering the biggest energy expansion since the post-war boom, particularly with artificial intelligence fueling a massive data center construction race. Politicians in both parties talk constantly about winning the future and strengthening domestic industry, but those ambitions all depend on one thing: abundant, reliable energy.

Yet across the country, more than 2,000 gigawatts of generation and storage capacity are stuck waiting for approvals. That’s more than the entire existing installed generating capacity of the United States, just sitting there. Projects wait five years or more on average from application to commercial operation, a timeline that has more than doubled over the past 15 years. A new transmission line takes more than a decade to permit and build. Electricity demand is rising fast, driven by data centers and the reshoring of manufacturing and electrification, and we do not have the infrastructure to meet it. That broader dysfunction provides important context for the controversy surrounding recent offshore wind projects.