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Q&A

Do Trump’s Attacks on Renewables Make a Permitting Deal Pointless?

A conversation with Jared Huffman, ranking member of the House Committee on Natural Resources.

Jared Huffman
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Today’s chat is with House Natural Resources ranking member Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the most important committee for land use in the House of Representatives. This week, Huffman and other Democrats spoke out against efforts by the Trump administration to lay off staff at four publicly backed power grid planners and operators known as Power Marketing Administrators, or PMAs. This led me to ask Huffman’s office if I could chat with the congressman about the eroding independence of these historically insulated government bodies, as well as permitting staff.

Our conversation left me feeling mostly hopeless on solutions coming anytime soon, with a dash of gratitude that at least someone in government cares about this.

Here’s an edited transcript of our conversation:

Walk me through how, in the minority, you’re trying to deal with the politicization of and disruption to ordinarily independent agencies and entities that operate our government?

We don’t have the tools I’d like, but we’re not entirely powerless. We have our public platforms and communication opportunities. And our votes are still needed from time to time, even in a Republican Congress. So it’s a combination of that and working with outside litigants where we can and trying our best to drive public opinion. That’s pretty much the toolbox.

Do you envision this issue — given how much trouble there was getting folks to appreciate the IRA — being something that really gets the public’s attention?

PMAs are pretty abstract for most Americans. I don’t know that we are going to get them to understand what all of these entities do or how they’re funded or why they’re important. But this clown car exercise with DOGE doing a ready-set-aim exercise with the PMAs could be a learning moment.

What do you mean by that?

These guys are running roughshod through a whole bunch of federal agencies that they don’t even really understand, and they’re pretending to cut things and lay off people in some cases that don’t even affect the federal treasury or deficit. So the levels of ignorance and recklessness are stunning and could help us explain to the American people what’s wrong with this out of control process.

What are you hearing in terms of how the government is interacting with energy developers, especially those in renewables?

I hear a lot of concern and confusion. I don’t know that this PMA episode is particularly revealing in terms of where we’re going with energy development and the grid. But it’s definitely a cautionary tale about allowing a bunch of bozos in hoodies to have the authority to cut budgets they don’t understand.

But with respect to the PMAs, those are usually independent. Do you or anyone you speak to have concern about this independence eroding and it trickling down to renewables?

Oh, of course I am concerned about that. But I am concerned about that across the spectrum of independent agencies. From the DOJ to the FTC to the SEC to the Postal Service and everything else. This is fundamentally a bad idea to try to bring every entity on the federal org chart under the direct authority of Donald Trump.

Another place we’ve seen staff shakeup is in environmental agencies tasked with permitting projects.

You and other lawmakers gave agencies more money to hire staff to process permits and my reporting has revealed how that money and staff time has been impacted by Trump’s return to the White House. Walk me through how you see the situation with permitting, staff and the layoffs?

What we did was real permitting reform. What they want to do is talk about permitting reform and then actually getting rid of environmental laws. So you’re going to see them do things — they’ve already started — that actually slow down permitting and environmental reviews. And this is something they claim they care about. It’s all in service of a bigger objective: to clear away environmental laws so things like fossil fuel development don’t even have to get permits. They just happen.

Do you think we’re about to be in a world where fossil fuel permits flow from the federal agencies like water but renewables struggle to get their go-aheads?

I think that’s clearly where they want to go.

Does that make it harder to pass legislation to deal with the permitting process?

I think it makes it pointless. To have an intelligent conversation about permitting reform when these guys won’t even follow legislation — they won’t even keep the things we have already done that are achieving permitting reform.

If you were talking to an energy executive, one of these renewables developers who still wants to build projects, what would you say to them?

I’d say, work with state and local governments.

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Hotspots

Judge, Siding With Trump, Saves Solar From NEPA

And more on the week’s biggest conflicts around renewable energy projects.

The United States.
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1. Jackson County, Kansas – A judge has rejected a Hail Mary lawsuit to kill a single solar farm over it benefiting from the Inflation Reduction Act, siding with arguments from a somewhat unexpected source — the Trump administration’s Justice Department — which argued that projects qualifying for tax credits do not require federal environmental reviews.

  • We previously reported that this lawsuit filed by frustrated Kansans targeted implementation of the IRA when it first was filed in February. That was true then, but afterwards an amended complaint was filed that focused entirely on the solar farm at the heart of the case: NextEra’s Jeffrey Solar. The case focuses now on whether Jeffrey benefiting from IRA credits means it should’ve gotten reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act.
  • Perhaps surprisingly to some, the Trump Justice Department argued against these NEPA reviews – a posture that jibes with the administration’s approach to streamlining the overall environmental analysis process but works in favor of companies using IRA credits.
  • In a ruling that came down on Tuesday, District Judge Holly Teeter ruled the landowners lacked standing to sue because “there is a mismatch between their environmental concerns tied to construction of the Jeffrey Solar Project and the tax credits and regulations,” and they did not “plausibly allege the substantial federal control and responsibility necessary to trigger NEPA review.”
  • “Plaintiffs’ claims, arguments, and requested relief have been difficult to analyze,” Teeter wrote in her opinion. “They are trying to use the procedural requirements of NEPA as a roadblock because they do not like what Congress has chosen to incentivize and what regulations Jackson County is considering. But those challenges must be made to the legislative branch, not to the judiciary.”

2. Portage County, Wisconsin – The largest solar project in the Badger State is now one step closer to construction after settling with environmentalists concerned about impacts to the Greater Prairie Chicken, an imperiled bird species beloved in wildlife conservation circles.

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Renewables Swept Up in Data Center Backlash

Just look at Virginia.

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Solar and wind projects are getting swept up in the blowback to data center construction, presenting a risk to renewable energy companies who are hoping to ride the rise of AI in an otherwise difficult moment for the industry.

The American data center boom is going to demand an enormous amount of electricity and renewables developers believe much of it will come from solar and wind. But while these types of energy generation may be more easily constructed than, say, a fossil power plant, it doesn’t necessarily mean a connection to a data center will make a renewable project more popular. Not to mention data centers in rural areas face complaints that overlap with prominent arguments against solar and wind – like noise and impacts to water and farmland – which is leading to unfavorable outcomes for renewable energy developers more broadly when a community turns against a data center.

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Q&A

How the Wind Industry Can Fight Back

A conversation with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications

The Q&A subject.
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Today’s conversation is with Chris Moyer of Echo Communications, a D.C.-based communications firm that focuses on defending zero- and low-carbon energy and federal investments in climate action. Moyer, a veteran communications adviser who previously worked on Capitol Hill, has some hot takes as of late about how he believes industry and political leaders have in his view failed to properly rebut attacks on solar and wind energy, in addition to the Inflation Reduction Act. On Tuesday he sent an email blast out to his listserv – which I am on – that boldly declared: “The Wind Industry’s Strategy is Failing.”

Of course after getting that email, it shouldn’t surprise readers of The Fight to hear I had to understand what he meant by that, and share it with all of you. So here goes. The following conversation has been abridged and lightly edited for clarity.

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