OPINION:
During National Clean Energy Week, we commemorate the innovation and successes of clean energy producers across America. Yet while we celebrate our advancements, we must also renew our work to modernize the permitting process. Without these reforms, we will lose valuable ground against foreign adversaries like China and Russia and put our future energy dominance at risk.
What’s now devolved into an outdated and cumbersome permitting process was initially intended to promote informed decisions and assess the environmental impacts of major federal actions and projects. Today, the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) has mutated into a significant impediment to the infrastructure and energy projects essential to America’s energy and national security. NEPA reviews are exercises requiring agencies to amass behemoth environmental treatises, increasing project costs and creating delays for projects ranging from transportation and infrastructure to forestry, conservation, and energy development.
Time is not on our side. As America faces growing threats from adversaries across the globe, these prolonged NEPA analyses and the constant litigation that follows them pose significant barriers to all-of-the-above energy production, infrastructure projects, forest management, and more. China is building an average of one new coal plant per week; they’re not waiting for our bloated agencies to spill ink or our courts to finish litigating projects. We must push back by developing our resources, which will provide cleaner, safer, and more reliable energy right here at home.
Enter permitting reform. This month, the House Committee on Natural Resources heard testimony on my draft legislation that would address the statutory flaws of NEPA that create lengthy timelines and frivolous litigation. These flaws will be our downfall if not corrected and brought into the 21st Century.
My proposed amendments would build on the NEPA reforms passed in the Fiscal Responsibly Act, limiting the scope of environmental reviews and clarifying when NEPA is triggered. The legislation also creates timelines for judicial review under NEPA, establishes limitations for standing and limits vacatur and injunction of agency decisions. These changes will cultivate certainty in the permitting process and spur domestic investment in critical infrastructure, energy and conservation projects.
As we celebrate the strides we have taken in clean energy this week, let us also not forget the time for permitting reform is now to bring these projects and ideas to life. Our energy and national security depend on it.
SPECIAL COVERAGE: National Clean Energy Week: Clean energy solutions for a stronger America
• Rep. Bruce Westerman represents Arkansas’ Fourth Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives, where he serves on the Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure and as Chairman of the Committee on Natural Resources.
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