The Energy Permitting Reform Act 2024

[KayWard]

Does anyone know what happened to this bill that was supposed to make the permitting process easier, create jobs, and revolutionize the industry. It's a bipartisan bill, but that's about all I can find about it. The news talked about it for a few days, but I've not seen it mentioned since July.

 

[Mondo]

Hey, KayWard, I'm going to link you to the website that I use for tracking bills through Congress. You can find the information right here. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to go through various committees before the bill even makes it onto the floor for a vote. It looks like this one has a long way to go.

 

[Eric]

Thanks for that info, @Mondo. I just Googled the bill and see that there's plenty of continued news updates/discourse, so it appears to be very much alive still. I assume the bill's fate rests with the results on the upcoming election at this point.

The legislation doesn't appear to be strictly liberal or conservative as it tries to reduce permitting constraints across the energy sector broadly (i.e., for both mining/drilling interests and clean energy development). I know "green tape" - i.e., permitting delays faced by wind/solar/geothermal projects - has long been a major barrier to the clean energy transition. Hopefully Congress is ultimately able to coalesce around some version of the bill, or at least pass some parts of it (e.g., the judicial review reforms or transmission lines provision), and shave off at least a few years of bureaucratic stagnation.

 

[Eric]

Looks like this legislation finally collapsed a couple weeks ago. There was some 11th-hour negotiating to try and get a bill passed ahead of the next Congress but differences re: NEPA reform couldn't be worked out.