The words that rarely come together in a sentence, “Congress,” “agree,” “White House,” now have a chance.
That is because of the proposal by a prominent Democratic senator, with the approval of the Biden administration, to push reasonable reductions in the endless permitting and reviews that hobble building projects.
For U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., the bill is a way to get some oil and gas projects through the labyrinth of rules and reviews that are often mobilized by environmentalists and grassroots activists to delay projects for years.
The Trump administration worked to make accommodations in environmental reviews amid considerable agreement that today’s process is literally fossilized, in the sense that fossil fuel projects are so often targeted by lawsuits.
What’s in it for the White House? Delays can hobble cleaner-energy projects too. And construction of new transmission lines for electricity, in particular, are vital to achieving the emissions reductions President Joe Biden wants.
“Right now, the permitting process for clean energy infrastructure, including transmission, is plagued by delays and bottlenecks,” Biden’s “climate czar” John Podesta told a Washington audience. “We’ve got to fix this problem now.”
Republicans ought to be pushing for agreement to this rare outburst of common sense in the Biden administration when it comes to energy. Environmental groups are already crying betrayal, but this is not an end to environmental reviews.
The nation needs more energy of all types, not over-lawyered rules and regs that Podesta said, quite accurately, can bog down needed projects for years before a shovel of dirt is turned. We think natural-gas pipelines, a cleaner-burning fuel, should be expedited where possible.
This is a problem in this country that involves more than pipelines for natural gas or CO2, or wind and solar farms. No one is opposed to thorough environmental reviews for any project, but time is money, and the complexity of the process drives up the cost of construction through delay.
“We got so good at stopping projects that we forgot how to build,” said Podesta, a senior adviser on climate change to President Barack Obama and founder of the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank.
The oil and gas industry that is so economically vital to Louisiana and the nation should benefit, but the Manchin legislation also looks, with White House blessings, to expanding renewable energy on federal lands, particularly in the West. It also could make many types of construction easier, if Republicans and Democrats come together to get a bill onto the president’s desk.
That’s a longtime concern of many in the Louisiana delegation in Congress, particularly U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, who has been involved in these issues. The new GOP-led House has passed a sweeping bill embodying industry calls for easier permitting, but that bill has had little traction in the Senate.
The White House issued orders in the meantime to try to reduce red tape on existing projects, according to The New York Times.
Visitors to China and other countries where massive investments in airports and railways have been made often comment on the dilapidation of so many public facilities in this country.
Over the coming few years, the money that the Biden administration has helped push into infrastructure development will catch us up in many areas. That means that passage of a reasonable permitting bill, while projects are still in design stages, is most urgent.
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