Many clean energy developers were thrilled when Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso finally released their plan for permitting reform — a crucial step toward actually enacting President Joe Biden’s ambitious climate policies. One problem: Traditional environmental groups hate the proposal.
The sharp disagreement in the climate community over the bill is just another incident in a widening rift over how to make the clean energy transition — one that echoes the divides between moderates and progressives within the Democratic Party.
Green groups like the Sierra Club and Earthjustice are finding themselves increasingly at odds with clean energy developers and more centrist policy wonks eager to shorten environmental reviews, lessen the threat of lawsuits and ultimately decrease the power of progressive climate activists.
Biden’s sweeping set of climate-related rules, combined with the billions of dollars of incentives for clean energy created by the Inflation Reduction Act and infrastructure law, could spur a complete transformation in how energy is produced and used in the United States. One obstacle, however, is the byzantine and onerous process required to build new energy projects.
The Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform bill aims to address the bureaucratic permitting and siting processes that burden the build-out of power grid infrastructure and clean energy projects. It does so by reducing and speeding up the paperwork for new projects, offering new opportunities for projects with lower environmental impact to skip reviews and creating easier ways to pay for, plan for and build new transmission.
The permitting proposal does, however, give the fossil fuel industry a number of wins: Among other provisions, it expands opportunities for oil and natural gas leasing, guarantees hard rock mining rights on federal lands and ends the Biden administration’s pause on new liquefied natural gas export approvals. The National Mining Association, the American Petroleum Institute and several other industry groups endorsed the legislation.
Still, it is not just Republicans who immediately expressed support. Democratic Sens. Martin Heinrich and John Hickenlooper (the original sponsor of the Big WIRES Act transmission reform bill from 2023) endorsed the proposal. Sen. Tom Carper praised the proposal’s transmission reforms. Grid United, the American Council on Renewable Energy, Americans for a Clean Energy Grid, the American Clean Power Association, the Solar Energy Industries Association and the Breakthrough Institute were among the many industry players and policy advocates to back it as well. Transmission companies, policy wonks, academics and developers emailed NOTUS saying they were “thrilled” and that the bill would be a “game changer” for the future of the grid.
Fatima Ahmad, a former attorney with the House Climate Crisis Select Committee and now a lobbyist with clean energy group Boundary Stone Partners, said she’s optimistic the bill will eventually become law and that she’s impressed with the nature of the bipartisan support.
“Several environmental groups jumped to paint this bill as a hand-out for the oil and gas industry. Not only does this absolutist mindset show disregard for pragmatic policy-making, it ignores the fact that the bill produces a clear net-benefit for climate efforts,” wrote Nikki Chiappa and Seaver Wang at Breakthrough.
Siting, permitting and environmental reviews can tack on several years onto a project’s timeline, and new transmission infrastructure often takes at least a decade to build. Lawsuits against environmental reviews often add additional years of delay after the permitting is finished. Combined, those timelines are far too slow to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in line with the Biden administration’s commitments or the Paris Agreement. They also make clean energy far more expensive for developers and consumers.
But the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Center for Biological Diversity and Earthjustice — the same groups that defend and want to prolong Biden’s ambitious climate legacy — described the proposal as unacceptable, decrying the legislation’s concessions to fossil fuel and mining industries.
“This bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction,” Alexandra Adams, managing director of government affairs at NRDC, said in a statement. The Sierra Club’s statement nearly mirrored that of the NRDC, with policy director Mahyar Sorour calling the efforts “handouts to polluters.”
These more progressive groups focus their efforts and resources on campaigning to end the use of fossil fuels, suing polluters, advocating for environmentally disadvantaged communities, protecting natural habitats and defending the EPA and Biden regulations in court. They argue that it should be possible to reform permitting and siting processes without compromising on fossil fuels and while ensuring that environmental justice is prioritized.
But some experts worry that a fossil fuel-oriented approach will actually slow the energy transition, hamper the ability to deploy the funds from the Inflation Reduction Act and disaffect voters.
“There’s a philosophical difference of approach. What I and a lot of clean energy pragmatists would argue is that trying to phase down the fossil fuel economy without making it easier to build clean energy is going to make people upset and actually going to slow down the transition in a political sense,” said Elan Sykes, the director of climate policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, an organization aligned with centrist Democrats. “I think that it’s a mistaken premise on the left that if we phase down fossil fuels the voting public is going to continue supporting the transition through that strategy. Voters are very unwilling to sacrifice their consumption or pay significantly higher prices and deal with frustrating supply gaps in the energy system.”
One environmental group hesitated to condemn the proposal, breaking with the lockstep of other traditional associations and exposing the lines of disagreement. The Environmental Defense Fund’s statement criticized the proposal’s fossil fuel provisions but generally expressed support for the legislation’s “meaningful improvements” on current law.
Ben Furnas, the former director of climate and sustainability in the New York City mayor’s office, cheered the proposal as addressing many of the problems he witnessed while handling negotiations for a critical $6 billion transmission line that will connect Quebec and New York City.
But Furnas hesitated to go as far as Sykes in criticizing the objections from the environmentalist side of the climate movement. “There’s a lot of good faith people working on these issues who really fairly disagree with each other,” Furnas said, acknowledging that he believes fossil fuels are probably going to play an important role in the short term and that the conversations about the role of fossil fuels in the medium term can be difficult.
Sykes argued that it’s already much easier to permit oil and gas projects under existing law, so the bill, for the most part, is giving clean energy and transmission projects many of the same rights that fossil fuel development already has.
Nick Loris, the vice president of public policy at the conservative climate advocacy group C3 Solutions, agreed. “I think there is just an adamant approach from the environmental organizations that we need to wind down fossil fuels immediately, and I don’t think that’s grounded in reality,” Loris said.
“There’s got to be a lot for the left to like in terms of removing some of these bottlenecks, in terms of what bipartisan compromise needs to look like,” he added.
While it’s unclear whether Democratic leadership or the White House will endorse the Manchin-Barrasso proposal, Reps. Bruce Westerman and Scott Peters are also planning a bipartisan proposal in the House.
“Who knows if this will actually get to the floor, but in terms of the actual approach to try to please as many people as possible … the staff in the offices and the members have done a really good job,” Loris said.
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Correction: This story has been updated to clarify Sen. Tom Carper’s position on the legislation. He praised the proposal’s transmission reforms.
Anna Kramer is a reporter at NOTUS.