The fate of a House GOP permitting deal stands on a knife’s edge.
During a dramatic vote on the House floor Tuesday, far-right Republicans and opponents of the offshore wind industry joined with Democrats in a nearly-successful attempt to defeat a procedural vote on the SPEED Act, a bill to streamline implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act.
Speaking with reporters off the House floor, GOP lawmakers said that the bill — which has the backing of both the oil and gas sector and some large trade groups that represent renewables companies — faced opposition from a handful of Republicans over language that would block the federal government from rescinding previously-issued permits for energy projects. The tactic is one Trump has used repeatedly to stymie offshore wind projects. Republican hardliners feared that a future version of the deal would take that language further, restricting the president’s power to stall solar and wind permit applications through extralegal bureaucratic delays.
The vote to consider SPEED ultimately passed with a margin of 215 to 209 votes, with two Republicans — Representatives Anna Paulina Luna and Christopher Smith — voting no. Though the bill is alive for now, the outcome casts a pall over the prospects for any permitting deal this Congress because, as Heatmap’s reporting has made clear, there is little shot of a grand deal on NEPA reform without exactly the sort of executive power restrictions Republican objectors feared.
That the bill nearly came up short also illustrates a shift in the GOP’s thinking on energy policy that has gone largely unnoticed. Vestiges of the party remain committed to the philosophy of “all of the above,” but the new generation of lawmakers is more likely to be anti-renewables at all costs. Combined with today’s hyper-partisan environment and narrow majorities in both chambers, that tension makes legislating on energy almost impossible.
Republicans used to approach energy policy in a laissez faire, let-a-thousand-flowers bloom fashion. This fuel-type agnosticism characterized Republicans’ approach to energy policy under the first Trump administration, as well as during the Biden era. Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy repeated the “all of the above” mantra to nudge his party closer to anything resembling a climate policy, and subscribed to the idea that any permitting deal would have to benefit all types of energy projects.
The SPEED Act closely resembles a McCarthy-era approach to energy policy: just make everything go faster.
It is true that the bill would bind the hands of the executive in some ways, requiring them to get consent from the project developer in order to voluntarily vacate a previously-issued NEPA approval. If someone sued the government because they believed a NEPA approval was invalid and got a federal court to agree, the judge overseeing the case would be barred from immediately vacating the approval or issuing an injunction on construction. This is a big reason why the oil and gas industry supports the bill, as it’s a way to shield the sector from environmentalists filing lawsuits against fossil-based extraction and fuel transportation projects (e.g. pipelines).
But there’s a small irony in the SPEED Act spinning out over offshore wind concerns, which is that if it were enacted today, not even its supporters think it would actually stop the administration from messing with wind projects. As pro-fossil pundit Alex Epstein noted on X, the bill would only limit the president’s authority to revoke approvals under NEPA. It would do nothing to erode presidential power under any other statute, including another one of the administration’s favorite tools against offshore wind, the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act.
I spoke with two separate energy industry attorneys who confirmed this interpretation. “It would be welcome for whatever the next administration would look like,” Peter Whitfield, a partner at Sidley Austin who works on energy projects, told me of the SPEED Act. “It might not be helpful now.” The bill’s clean energy backers are looking at the legislation as a “long range” play, he said: “They’re not looking at year one, two, three — they’re looking at years eight and after. I think that’s why there is so much enthusiasm in the renewable energy space for reform.”
Another attorney, who requested anonymity because they did not have permission from their firm, confirmed that the bill would stop the Trump administration from exploiting NEPA in the future, but said that nothing in the legislation requires agencies to move forward on energy projects.
It’s that eight-years-from-now future that seems to have the anti-renewables conservative wing in Congress worried. The House is expected to vote on the SPEED Act as soon as tomorrow, but lawmakers will first consider amendments offered by the Republicans who nearly killed the bill, including one that would explicitly bar offshore wind projects from benefiting under any of its NEPA changes.
If those amendments fail, the odds of final House passage are uncertain, although some Democrats who voted against the procedural motion may wind up voting for the final bill. If they succeed and the bill moves to the Senate, Democrats aim to add new ideas on transmission and the renewables permitting freeze that may upset frazzled Republicans even more.
“We would expect that senators wouldn’t endorse a House product,” Frank Macchiarola, chief advocacy officer for American Clean Power, told me in an interview last week. Macchiarola said the language in the House bill “goes a long way towards addressing the problem” of Trump’s war on renewables permits, but that it is “not a perfect product,” though he declined to speak on the record about what would get it closer to ideal. If I had to guess, I’d say that senators will try to provide new avenues for companies to compel an end to the review process, whether through legal challenges or other means of protest.
In other words, grab your popcorn — more drama is coming.
