Please call Congress about permitting reform today
Saturday, December 14th, 2024 08:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flwydHey, I've got a favor to ask you. Please call your Member of Congress and ask them to support including the Energy Permitting Reform Act in the budget continuing resolution. This legislation is moving fast, so please make the call this weekend. I hear that House Democrats particularly need to hear from constituents about this. If you don't have Congress on speed-dial you can use the tool at https://cclusa.org/take-action. It will take approximately one or two minutes total.
Background: Democrats passed the biggest climate bill in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, this congress. But only about 20% of the IRA's potential benefits will be realized if we can't build clean energy projects and connect them to the U.S. electric grid faster. It currently takes federal agencies an average of 4.5 years to complete environmental impact assessments for large energy projects. This timeline can be sped up without negatively impacting quality: we want the same decisions to be reached—yes to good projects and no to bad projects—faster. This July, the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee introduced a bipartisan bill to address some of the problems which unnecessarily delay energy project; this bill passed through committee on a 15 to 4 vote and has broad support in the Senate. With a divided Congress the bill is naturally a compromise, and does have some provisions about fossil fuel permitting. This led many environmental groups to reflexively oppose the bill when it was announced. However, more than 95% of projects waiting to be built are clean energy projects, so if we make the process for permitting (or rejecting) all projects faster, clean energy will outcompete and replace fossil fuel energy. Careful modeling indicates that the Energy Permitting Reform Act will have between a modest climate benefit and a large climate benefit by 2050, the typical target date for net-zero emissions. Additionally, many of the fossil fuel pieces of the bill are things that the Trump administration is likely to do anyway, so please encourage your Democratic House members to support this bill, rather than getting the fossil fuel parts without the clean energy parts next year.
Background: Democrats passed the biggest climate bill in U.S. history, the Inflation Reduction Act, this congress. But only about 20% of the IRA's potential benefits will be realized if we can't build clean energy projects and connect them to the U.S. electric grid faster. It currently takes federal agencies an average of 4.5 years to complete environmental impact assessments for large energy projects. This timeline can be sped up without negatively impacting quality: we want the same decisions to be reached—yes to good projects and no to bad projects—faster. This July, the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee introduced a bipartisan bill to address some of the problems which unnecessarily delay energy project; this bill passed through committee on a 15 to 4 vote and has broad support in the Senate. With a divided Congress the bill is naturally a compromise, and does have some provisions about fossil fuel permitting. This led many environmental groups to reflexively oppose the bill when it was announced. However, more than 95% of projects waiting to be built are clean energy projects, so if we make the process for permitting (or rejecting) all projects faster, clean energy will outcompete and replace fossil fuel energy. Careful modeling indicates that the Energy Permitting Reform Act will have between a modest climate benefit and a large climate benefit by 2050, the typical target date for net-zero emissions. Additionally, many of the fossil fuel pieces of the bill are things that the Trump administration is likely to do anyway, so please encourage your Democratic House members to support this bill, rather than getting the fossil fuel parts without the clean energy parts next year.
