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Whether that’s enough to see it through this Congress is another story.
We now know what a real bipartisan permitting overhaul could look like.
Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso on Monday unveiled the Energy Permitting Reform Act, the product of months of negotiations over how to craft a sweeping change to the nation’s federal energy project approvals system that could actually pass through Congress. It’s got a little bit of everything: For the oil and gas folks, there’s mandatory offshore oil and gas lease sales and streamlined permitting requirements; for renewables, there’s faster permits for “low-impact” construction jobs and new deployment goals; for transmission, there’s siting authority for interstate lines, compulsory interregional planning, and clarity on cost allocation. There are also sections devoted to helping mining projects navigate legal uncertainties around mill sites and assistance for hydropower projects needing extended licenses. Lastly there’s a fresh limit on the length of time allowed for legal challenges against energy projects of all types.
In other words, it’s an energy smorgasbord, and all sorts of fuels and resources are invited to the party.
Will such a bill be able to sail through Congress in the middle of a close election cycle? Unclear, but highly doubtful. Will it be able to overcome opposition from the major environmental groups — Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Earthjustice — that stymied Manchin’s prior permitting deal? We have yet to hear from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, or congressional Democratic leaders on whether they support the bill, and representatives for the White House and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer did not respond to requests for comment.
But to the people most deeply invested in bipartisan permitting compromise, none of that matters — for now, at least. In their view, this bill sets the parameters for whatever permitting deal will eventually become law, whether that’s in this Congress or the next.
“Some of the environmental community is going to look at this and see it as a net win for climate change, and some in the environmental community are more anti-fossil fuel than they are pro-reducing emissions, and so it’s harder for them to get over the fossil fuel aspect of the bill,” Xan Fishman, senior director of the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told me. “But to some extent, that’s how bipartisan deals come together. Not everyone is going to be happy.”
The biggest gain for energy transition advocates is plainly the transmission language. Since the Inflation Reduction Act (which also similarly frustrated environmental groups with its giveaways to oil and gas) became law, it has been painfully apparent that easing the federal permitting burden on transmission could speed up the deployment of renewables projects boosted by the climate law. But Republicans have so far been unwilling to consider advancing transmission support on its own, in which case the Beltway Elite conventional wisdom calls for sweetening the deal with measures that benefit fossil fuels.
Agencies have already tried to advance permitting assistance sans new legislation. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has advanced a potential fix to regional transmission planning via Order 1920, and the Interior Department has moved forward with regulation to ease permitting burdens on solar and wind projects. Congress has also moved piecemeal solutions to sector-specific problems, such as the ADVANCE Act, which provided federal officials with new legal resources to process cutting-edge nuclear projects. But these have not achieved anything close to the broad changes that industry representatives say are needed for the overall permitting regime.
Fishman and other observers in D.C. expect Manchin to try and move the bill out of his Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee imminently, but it’s best shot of seeing the floor won’t come until after the election, during the so-called “lame duck” session. They’re also expecting more permitting proposals out of a different committee, Senate Environment and Public Works, which has key jurisdiction over activities of the Environmental Protection Agency. Manchin couldn’t touch those because they don’t fall under the remit of his committee, but advocates for a deal believe EPA language would help relieve more of the burden projects face.
Yet with some climate Democrats coming out in support of the bill already, those seeking a permitting deal say the immediate odds for the Manchin-Barrasso bill enactment into law are not at all the point. What matters is that we now have a real life example of what a true blue bipartisan compromise on permitting that advances the energy transition can look like.
“Even if this doesn’t pass, this is the baseline for conversations,” Ryan Fitzpatrick of Third Way told me. “This is a net win for climate … it’s the starting point, however it may be adapted.”
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Did a battery plant disaster in California spark a PR crisis on the East Coast?
Battery fire fears are fomenting a storage backlash in New York City – and it risks turning into fresh PR hell for the industry.
Aggrieved neighbors, anti-BESS activists, and Republican politicians are galvanizing more opposition to battery storage in pockets of the five boroughs where development is actually happening, capturing rapt attention from other residents as well as members of the media. In Staten Island, a petition against a NineDot Energy battery project has received more than 1,300 signatures in a little over two months. Two weeks ago, advocates – backed by representatives of local politicians including Rep. Nicole Mallitokis – swarmed a public meeting on the project, getting a local community board to vote unanimously against the project.
According to Heatmap Pro’s proprietary modeling of local opinion around battery storage, there are likely twice as many strong opponents than strong supporters in the area:
Heatmap Pro
Yesterday, leaders in the Queens community of Hempstead enacted a year-long ban on BESS for at least a year after GOP Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, other local politicians, and a slew of aggrieved residents testified in favor of a moratorium. The day before, officials in the Long Island town of Southampton said at a public meeting they were ready to extend their battery storage ban until they enshrined a more restrictive development code – even as many energy companies testified against doing so, including NineDot and solar plus storage developer Key Capture Energy. Yonkers also recently extended its own battery moratorium.
This flurry of activity follows the Moss Landing battery plant fire in California, a rather exceptional event caused by tech that was extremely old and a battery chemistry that is no longer popular in the sector. But opponents of battery storage don’t care – they’re telling their friends to stop the community from becoming the next Moss Landing. The longer this goes on without a fulsome, strident response from the industry, the more communities may rally against them. Making matters even worse, as I explained in The Fight earlier this year, we’re seeing battery fire concerns impact solar projects too.
“This is a huge problem for solar. If [fires] start regularly happening, communities are going to say hey, you can’t put that there,” Derek Chase, CEO of battery fire smoke detection tech company OnSight Technologies, told me at Intersolar this week. “It’s going to be really detrimental.”
I’ve long worried New York City in particular may be a powder keg for the battery storage sector given its omnipresence as a popular media environment. If it happens in New York, the rest of the world learns about it.
I feel like the power of the New York media environment is not lost on Staten Island borough president Vito Fossella, a de facto leader of the anti-BESS movement in the boroughs. Last fall I interviewed Fossella, whose rhetorical strategy often leans on painting Staten Island as an overburdened community. (At least 13 battery storage projects have been in the works in Staten Island according to recent reporting. Fossella claims that is far more than any amount proposed elsewhere in the city.) He often points to battery blazes that happen elsewhere in the country, as well as fears about lithium-ion scooters that have caught fire. His goal is to enact very large setback distance requirements for battery storage, at a minimum.
“You can still put them throughout the city but you can’t put them next to people’s homes – what happens if one of these goes on fire next to a gas station,” he told me at the time, chalking the wider city government’s reluctance to capitulate on batteries to a “political problem.”
Well, I’m going to hold my breath for the real political problem in waiting – the inevitable backlash that happens when Mallitokis, D’Esposito, and others take this fight to Congress and the national stage. I bet that’s probably why American Clean Power just sent me a notice for a press briefing on battery safety next week …
And more of the week’s top conflicts around renewable energy.
1. Queen Anne’s County, Maryland – They really don’t want you to sign a solar lease out in the rural parts of this otherwise very pro-renewables state.
2. Logan County, Ohio – Staff for the Ohio Power Siting Board have recommended it reject Open Road Renewables’ Grange Solar agrivoltaics project.
3. Bandera County, Texas – On a slightly brighter note for solar, it appears that Pine Gate Renewables’ Rio Lago solar project might just be safe from county restrictions.
Here’s what else we’re watching…
In Illinois, Armoracia Solar is struggling to get necessary permits from Madison County.
In Kentucky, the mayor of Lexington is getting into a public spat with East Kentucky Power Cooperative over solar.
In Michigan, Livingston County is now backing the legal challenge to Michigan’s state permitting primacy law.
On the week’s top news around renewable energy policy.
1. IRA funding freeze update – Money is starting to get out the door, finally: the EPA unfroze most of its climate grant funding it had paused after Trump entered office.
2. Scalpel vs. sledgehammer – House Speaker Mike Johnson signaled Republicans in Congress may take a broader approach to repealing the Inflation Reduction Act than previously expected in tax talks.
3. Endangerment in danger – The EPA is reportedly urging the White House to back reversing its 2009 “endangerment” finding on air pollutants and climate change, a linchpin in the agency’s overall CO2 and climate regulatory scheme.