This week, Senate leaders released the text of a forthcoming energy permitting reform deal. As leaders representing employers, job creators, and millions of workers across 10 of our nation’s most dynamic energy states, we strongly endorse this deal and believe it could be a generational step forward for our economy, business community, and families in need of relief from high costs across every aspect of their daily lives.
Our states span the manufacturing hubs of the Midwest to the oil fields of the Gulf, the energy-rich Arctic and Appalachia to the tech corridors of the coasts. We can report that the American economy is poised for a generation of historic growth. Billions of dollars in private and public capital are waiting to build the next era of American infrastructure: reliable electric grids, advanced manufacturing facilities, domestic mineral supply chains, and energy generation of all kinds. The next industrial revolution is here for the taking, which would mean more jobs, more energy to power our daily lives, and lower costs for businesses and families.
Yet much of this potential is trapped under unnecessary bureaucracy and regulation. Our decades-old regulatory framework has devolved from sensible environmental safeguards into a trap of endless delay. Today, it takes an average of four to seven years just to clear the federal environmental review process for major infrastructure projects. Frivolous litigation and overlapping agency jurisdictions stall projects for years after they should have been breaking ground, deterring investment and obstructing opportunity.
Leaders across the political spectrum agree that the energy deal a bipartisan group of senators has placed on the table could rank among the most important pieces of legislation in a decade. It reforms outdated regulatory processes that hold projects in limbo for years, threatening American competitiveness and economic security and deferring high-paying construction jobs that power every aspect of American life. It means local communities are denied new tax revenues that fund schools and roads. Most critically, it means American businesses and families face rising costs and an increasingly insecure power grid.
The Senate deal establishes concrete timelines, designates lead agencies to streamline reviews, places reasonable limits on endless litigation, removes regulatory barriers to building more energy infrastructure, and provides certainty that projects can move forward once they are permitted — all while maintaining the strong safety and environmental standards that protect our communities and natural resources. Through these reforms, Congress can unleash American innovation without compromising our environment. Indeed, environmental stewards should be concerned that renewable energy projects have stalled just as traditional energy projects have languished.
Our states have led the way on similar reforms. Most recently, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia legislatures have implemented comprehensive state-level permitting reforms focusing on streamlining processes, eliminating bureaucratic red tape, instituting shot-clock deadlines, and emphasizing grid security. Texas, responsible for a quarter of the country’s energy production, passed reforms to allow for third-party reviews of certain energy permit applications. Louisiana enacted reforms to reinforce state authority over energy permitting decisions, helping create greater certainty and predictability for projects while reducing unnecessary delays. The Arkansas and Alaska chambers helped drive the implementation of executive actions on permitting reform, and states such as Kentucky, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia have passed resolutions or taken similar action to urge their federal counterparts to move forward with a bipartisan energy permitting reform deal.
We’ll see the benefits of these federal reforms directly in our home states. Streamlining the federal permitting process will allow us to upgrade aging infrastructure, integrate diverse energy sources into the grid, and ensure that our manufacturers have access to affordable, uninterrupted power. And this deal is technology-neutral — it accelerates traditional energy projects such as natural gas pipelines and nuclear facilities just as it accelerates wind, solar, and geothermal projects. It recognizes that to achieve a 21st-century economy, we simply need to build it all.
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For years, permitting reform has been viewed not as a bipartisan concept but as a political legislative challenge. But economic reality has a way of forcing action. Finally, a landmark bipartisan energy permitting reform deal is here, and the business communities in our 10 states and beyond stand ready to support it. We applaud our congressional delegations working in a bipartisan, bicameral way to deliver a legislative victory to the president’s desk that will lower costs, create jobs, and secure America’s energy future.
We need this energy permitting reform deal now. Let’s get to work.
The signatories to this piece include Kati Capozzi of the Alaska Chamber, Randy Zook of the Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce, Ashli Watts of the Kentucky Chamber, Will Green of the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry, Steve Stivers of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, Chad Warmington of the State Chamber of Oklahoma, Luke Bernstein of the Pennsylvania Chamber of Business and Industry, Josh Brown of the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce, Gabriela von zur Muehlen of the Texas Association of Business, and Steve Roberts of the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce.