America builds. That’s been the message from the Trump administration, and many early administrative actions have supported this ethos. But executive orders are not long term solutions — they are vulnerable to reversal under future administrations and almost always face a barrage of lawsuits that further delay projects. To provide the certainty that will encourage more building, Congress needs to step in and codify permitting reforms into law.
The Natural Resources committee reconciliation bill takes a MAJOR step in that direction. Specifically, the bill would allow builders to pay a fee in order to receive a streamlined review under the National Environmental Policy Act, better known as “NEPA”.
Here are some items in the bill to advance America’s energy resources. More from our source (italicized and in quotations) below:
Nuts and Bolts
- This bill was worked on in consultation with the Senate, White House, and leadership in the House. Should the permitting reform provisions withstand scrutiny from the parliamentarian (more on that below), it should see little legislative changes.
- The permitting reform affects all projects — oil and gas, renewable energy, transmission lines, and every other infrastructure project that faces NEPA review.
- Permitting reform is bipartisan. Bureaucracy and litigation have slowed projects ranging from fossil fuels to renewable energy — frustrating lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. But given the legislative vehicle (reconciliation) this will likely be a party-line vote.
How the Permitting Reform Works
- “If you have an environmental impact statement that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars — you pay 125 percent of whatever that cost is, and you pay that into the Treasury, and then when you pay that fee, you get a couple things out of it.”
- “One, you get an EIS (environment impact statement) in one year or less, and an Environmental Assessment in six months. [This timeline significantly cuts down from the current 4 year average.]
- “And then the most important piece of it is the judicial prohibition. There’s no litigation associated if you pay that fee. So you get your EIS, you can’t be subject to frivolous environmental litigation.”
The Impact
- “Litigation when it comes to permitting reform is the whole ball game. And to the extent that you can keep people out of court and keep these frivolous environmental lawsuits from these groups — if you can prevent those from happening in first instance — that’s gonna be the vast bulk of your problem is from those lawsuits.“
- “This [reconciliation bill] would be one of the most significant wins from a permitting reform perspective in probably a few decades, maybe longer.”
What’s Next
- “That’s the tricky part of this — you’re going to have to put this in front of the parliamentarian in the Senate. … Now, again, the Byrd test is that the budgetary impact can’t be merely incidental to the policy you’re trying to advance. So just because you have a budgetary impact doesn’t get you all the way. So she [Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough] could look at it like, ‘Okay, well, you’re paying a fee, but you guys have all this policy here. It looks to me like you’re trying to advance a policy. And so maybe I’ll just take this judicial review piece out of it.”
