House Permitting Bill Would Block Trump From Pulling Permits

A key House panel this afternoon advanced a bipartisan permitting deal that would include language appearing to bar Donald Trump or any other president from rescinding permits for energy projects.

The House Natural Resources Committee approved the SPEED Act, which would do stuff energy developers of all stripes say they want – time-clocks on when federal permits are issued and deadlines on when court challenges can be filed — by a vote of 25 to 18.

Under an amendment added by voice vote to the bill in committee, the bill now also includes language explicitly saying federal agencies cannot revoke, suspend, alter or interfere with an already-approved permit to an energy project. GOP Natural Resources chair Bruce Westerman told the audience at the bill markup that the amendment was the result of behind-the-scenes talks to try and assuage Democrats holding out over the Trump administration’s freeze on federal permitting for renewable energy and its attacks on previously permitted offshore wind projects.

During the hearing House Democrats listed out other complaints they want addressed before giving their support, including “parity” between renewable energy and fossil fuels in the permitting process as well as some extra mechanism against blocking projects in the bureaucratic pipeline. It’s easy to understand why they want more assurances given rescinding permits is only one of many ways Trump has gone after renewables projects.

But as Thomas Hochman of the Foundation for American Innovation noted at a Heatmap event in D.C. on Tuesday, the oil and gas industry is also interested in neutralizing the permitting process from any tech-specific politics that could come back to bite them. “They’re imagining a President Newsom in 2029 and they’re worried the same tools that have been uncovered to block wind and solar will then be used to block oil and gas.”

The bill would also insert a number of new stipulations into the permitting review process intended to move things along in a simpler, faster fashion. For example, an agency would only be able to consider impacts that "share a reasonably close causal relationship to, and are proximately caused by, the immediate project or action under consideration; and may not consider effects that are speculative, attenuated from the project or action, separate in time or place from the project or action, or in relation to separate existing or potential future projects or actions."

But judging by the final vote, it’s unclear if the amendment targeting the Trump administration will be enough to get a permitting deal across the finish line should this bill get ultimately voted out of the House by the full legislative chamber. Only two Democrats – outgoing centrist Jared Golden who helped author the bill and moderate swing district Californian Adam Gray – voted in support.

“The Trump administration is putting culture wars ahead of lowering energy costs for the American people. Unleashing American energy means unleashing all of it, including affordable clean energy,” said Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Democrat from Rhode Island critical of Trump’s attacks on offshore wind. Magaziner said under other circumstances he may have supported the legislation but “in order for me to vote for this bill I need strong language to ensure the Trump administration cannot continue to unfairly block clean energy projects from getting to the grid.”

Other Democrats in the hearing echoed Magaziner’s comments, and during the markup the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition – a group of influential Democrats working on climate policy in the chamber – put out a statement saying their frustrations remain and demanding the bill “affirmatively end the scorched-earth attacks on clean energy, restore permitting integrity for projects that have been unfairly targeted, and ensure fairness and neutrality going forward.”

Still, the Democrats on the Natural Resources Committee will not be able to stop the bill and it might get more support from members of the party on the House floor (the committee is usually where a lot of more progressive firebrands land). But their concerns are very much representative of what Senate Democrats might raise.

Rep. Scott Peters, a California Democrat involved in the House permitting talks, told me during a phone interview this afternoon that the language added to the bill “solves a lot of the problem on permit certainty” but that getting the deal across the finish line will require solving “the Burgum problem,” referring to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.

Apparently, per Peters, a major Democratic sticking point is Burgum’s new layer of political review requiring him to sign off on essentially every Interior Department decision needed for permitting solar and wind projects. Any progress further will mean Republican concessions there. “Sending a camera out to survey a site... the Secretary of Interior has to sign off on that, and that’s the opposite of permitting reform.”

An ideal way to deal with the Interior Department’s stall tactic, he said, is to add compulsory deadlines for specific decisions to the bill so that political leaders can’t sit on their hands like that. Still, Peters is optimistic after the addition of the language blocking presidents from rescinding previously-issued permits.

“Today didn’t finish the job but it was a big step forward,” Peters said.