Republicans and Democrats are finding common ground in seeking to ease permitting delays that are slowing fossil fuel development and clean energy alike, but remain divided on possible solutions.
The idea of faster permitting holds bipartisan appeal. It gets support from Republicans who want to ease barriers to energy production and Democrats who want the $369bn in climate spending from last year's Inflation Reduction Act to support the construction of wind, solar and electric transmission projects.
"Deploying zero-emission technologies at scale across the country will be the greatest permitting challenge in generations," US representative Debbie Dingell (D-Michigan) said today at the House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee's first hearing this year.
But the two parties remain split on solutions, as Republicans seek big changes to laws such as the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), while Democrats seek smaller changes such as adding permitting staff.
President Joe Biden did not mention permitting yesterday in his State of the Union address, leaving it up to lawmakers to figure out themselves what legislation can pass. Republicans say they want to find ways to "unleash" domestic energy production, which they say will create jobs and avoid having to import energy from countries with weaker environmental standards.
"Republicans care about the environment and the economy," committee chairman Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas) said. "And we know that if we produce more of these products here at home, we'd benefit both greatly."
Oil industry and renewable energy industry groups are lobbying Congress for an overhaul of permitting, which they say would minimize the years of reviews and litigation that has made investors reluctant to support new energy infrastructure.
"We're not suggesting for a second that we undermine the bedrock laws of this country," American Clean Power chief advocacy officer JC Sandberg said. "But there is an ability, I think, to make some common sense reforms to do this."
Renewable developers want federal regulators to have more authority to approve electric transmission. Oil groups are pitching ideas like narrowing NEPA to focus only on the direct greenhouse gas emissions of a proposed project, rather than emissions from burning fossil fuels.
"It's almost impossible to get a judge to find that there's not some deficiency in the NEPA," Western Energy Alliance president Kathleen Sgamma said.
But Democrats say the focus by the oil and gas sector on streamlining permitting is largely about limiting public input and fast-tracking drilling. Federal agencies should have expanded staffing, the committee's ranking member Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona) said, but Democrats will not support weakening bedrock environmental laws.
"What do these industries want?" Grijavla said. "They want to hoard more of our public lands despite the fact the fossil fuel industry already has thousands of approved permits."
