This summer, a bipartisan bill sponsored by Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) to expedite the permitting of energy infrastructure cleared the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. A similar bill is being considered by the House Committee on Natural Resources.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) reportedly wants to bring the Manchin-Barrasso bill to the floor for a vote during the “lame duck” session before January. A version of “permitting reform” could become law soon.
Senators Manchin and Barrasso, the American Petroleum Institute, and other supporters of these bills claim that there’s a crisis of energy availability, affordability and reliability in this country. And they blame that crisis on restrictive permitting processes for energy infrastructure.
But none of this is true.
The U.S. is a net exporter of both crude oil and its derivatives, as well as natural gas. We produce more than enough fossil fuels to meet domestic demand. Likewise, we generate enough electricity on a monthly basis to meet domestic demand. Our power grid is highly reliable, with infrequent, short service interruptions mostly attributable to distribution line problems (such as downed power lines during a storm).
The UN’s court will soon clarify nations’ legal responsibility to avert the human rights impacts of climate catastrophe.
Even when energy availability crises do occur, insufficient generation capacity isn’t the cause.
During the 2021 Texas freeze, all generation facilities, of every kind, struggled to generate enough power, and adding more capacity wouldn’t have helped. The Texas grid’s overreliance on natural gas in particular made it more vulnerable to gas supply disruptions because of frigid weather — and its isolation from the rest of the U.S. grid made it harder for Texas to import power from neighboring states. Worse still, corporate profiteering through generating artificial scarcity to drive up natural gas prices may have played a role.
The summer 2024 blackout during Hurricane Beryl was caused by downed power lines, exacerbated by the failure of Texas utilities to make their distribution infrastructure more resilient in the face of climate change. New generation or transmission infrastructure wouldn’t have prevented this blackout.
The U.S. is a net exporter of both crude oil and its derivatives, as well as natural gas. We produce more than enough fossil fuels to meet domestic demand.
Americans do experience energy affordability issues, but none of them have to do with permitting of energy infrastructure. Crude oil prices soared in the summer of 2022, when a combination of factors including collusion and price fixing by some in the industry and supply disruptions caused by the Russia-Ukraine war led to a price spike. Lack of production and refining infrastructure wasn’t to blame.
Natural gas prices showed similar trends, driven by some of the same factors. In fact, by expanding liquefied natural gas exports, the Senate bill may even increase domestic prices for natural gas, making utility bills higher.
Greenwashing Fossil Fuel Development
In addition to greenlighting more fossil fuel development, some backers of “permitting reform” also claim that weakening environmental standards will facilitate the rapid buildout of renewable energy and transmission lines for it.
Several studies have identified the key obstacles to the buildout of renewable energy. One is the wait time for generation projects to get connected to the power grid, which is known as the interconnection queue. As of 2022, there were about 2,000 gigawatts of capacity in the interconnection queue, of which 95 percent were from wind, solar and storage projects.
Bureaucratic delays at grid operators and utilities, not environmental regulation, were the culprit here. Another key obstacle is understaffing and lack of capacity in permitting agencies.
But more than 95 percent of renewable energy projects already face a streamlined federal environmental review process, or do not undergo review at all, because they usually aren’t polluting and controversial. There’s simply no credible evidence that restrictive environmental laws are causing delays in bringing renewable energy online.
Likewise, the need for a massive transmission buildout to facilitate renewable energy expansion is exaggerated. There’s huge potential for expanding distributed renewable energy in or near major centers of electricity demand.
Proponents of the Senate bill point to modeling claiming that the benefits of renewable energy and transmission line expansion will outweigh increased emissions from expedited permitting for fossil fuel projects, and more fossil fuel leasing on public lands and waters.
However, the modeling is flawed. By relying on official government data, it undercounts emissions of methane in oil and gas drilling and transportation, as shown by numerous peer-reviewed studies. This is a serious shortcoming, because methane is a short-lived but powerful climate pollutant — 81 times more powerful than carbon dioxide over a 20-year window and 28 times more powerful over a 100-year window.
Further, the modeling makes unfounded assumptions about climate benefits from U.S. liquefied natural gas exports replacing coal in importing countries. There’s evidence that lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of liquefied natural gas, including methane leakage and emissions from the liquefaction process, are actually worse than emissions from coal — and that the climate damage from liquefied natural gas exports outweighs any economic benefits.
Fossil Fueled Lobbying
The push for more fossil fuel infrastructure is contrary to science. Every credible international body with expertise on this issue, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the International Energy Agency and the UN Environment Programme, agrees on the need to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure.
It’s also contrary to justice. Indigenous, Black, Brown and poor white communities have long borne the brunt of air and water pollution from the U.S. fossil fuel industry and the resulting health consequences. Adding to this burden would be outrageous.
There’s no excuse to ease permitting for fossil fuels along with renewable energy.
The chorus of establishment voices pushing for “permitting reform” without considering the evidence can be partly attributed to groupthink. But some of them may be acting in bad faith.
The American Petroleum Institute supports the Manchin-Barrasso bill, which should tell you everything you need to know about who’s behind this push.
Sen. Joe Manchin received more oil and gas campaign money than any other member of the Senate or House for years — and owns a coal company. Sen. John Barrasso is the third highest recipient of oil and gas industry money in all of Congress in the current election cycle. Rep. Bruce Westerman, lead sponsor of the House bill, received more than $300,000 in oil and gas campaign money, making the industry his top contributor.
In other words, leading supporters of permitting reform either have a business interest in it — or have effectively been bribed.
If Congress wants to make policy in the public interest, using the best available evidence, they need to reverse course. They need to pass legislation banning new fossil fuel infrastructure and instead requiring the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to reform interconnection procedures to clear the backlog in connecting renewables to the grid.
Instead of gutting the National Environmental Policy Act and other environmental laws to benefit polluting energy projects, they should pass legislation that provides funding to permitting agencies to hire more staff with relevant expertise, and requires more transparency and community engagement. There’s already a bill that does exactly that.
The job of those who care about the climate is to compel Congress to do it.
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