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A federal court has once again allowed Orsted to resume construction on its offshore wind project.
The move would mark a significant escalation in Trump’s hostility toward climate diplomacy.
The administration has already lost once in court wielding the same argument against Revolution Wind.
The SPEED Act faces near-certain opposition in the Senate.
The market is reeling from a trio of worrisome data center announcements.
Plus more insights from Heatmap’s latest event Washington, D.C.
A letter from the Solar Energy Industries Association describes the administration’s “nearly complete moratorium on permitting.”
A major solar energy trade group now says the Trump administration is refusing to do even routine work to permit solar projects on private lands — and that the situation has become so dire for the industry, lawmakers discussing permitting reform in Congress should intervene.
The Solar Energy Industries Association on Thursday published a letter it sent to top congressional leaders of both parties asserting that a July memo from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum mandating “elevated” review for renewables project decisions instead resulted in “a nearly complete moratorium on permitting for any project in which the Department of Interior may play a role, on both federal and private land, no matter how minor.” The letter was signed by more than 140 solar companies, including large players EDF Power Solutions, RES, and VDE Americas.
The letter reinforces a theme underlying much of Heatmap’s coverage since the memo’s release — that the bureaucratic freeze against solar decision-making has stretched far beyond final permits to processes once considered ancillary. It also confirms that the enhanced review has jammed up offices outside Burgum’s purview, such as the Army Corps of Engineers, which oversees wetlands, water crossings, and tree removals, and requires Interior to sign off on actions through the interagency consultation process.
SEIA’s letter asserts that the impacts of Burgum’s memo stretch even to projects on private lands seeking Interior’s assistance to determine whether federally protected species are even present — meaning that regardless of whether endangered animals or flowers are there, companies are now taking on an outsized legal risk by moving forward with any kind of development.
After listing out these impacts in its letter, SEIA asked Congress to pressure Interior into revoking the July memo in its entirety. The trade group added there may be things Interior could do besides revoking the memo that would amount to “reasonable steps” in the “short-term to prevent unnecessary delays in energy development that is currently poised to help meet the growing energy demands of AI and other industries.” SEIA did not elaborate on what those actions would look like in its letter.
“Businesses need certainty in order to continue making investments in the United States to build out much-needed energy projects,” SEIA’s letter reads. “Certainty must include a review process that does not discriminate by energy source.” It concludes: “We urge Congress to keep fairness and certainty at the center of permitting negotiations.”
Notably, the letter arrived after American Clean Power — another major trade group representing renewable energy companies — backed a major GOP-authored permitting bill called the SPEED Act that is moving through the House. Although the bill has some bipartisan support from the most moderate wing of the House Democratic caucus, it has yet to win support from Democrats involved in bipartisan permitting talks, including Representative Scott Peters, who told me he’d back the bill only if Trump were prevented from stalling federal decision-making for renewable energy projects.
SEIA has deliberately set itself apart from ACP in this regard, telling me last week that it was neutral on the legislation as it stands. In a statement released with the letter to Congress, the trade group’s CEO, Abigail Ross Hopper, said that while “the solar industry values the continued bipartisan engagement on permitting reform, the SPEED Act, as passed out of committee, falls short of addressing this core problem: the ongoing permitting moratorium.”
“To be clear, there is no question we need permitting reform,” Hopper stated. “There is an agreement to be reached, and SEIA and our 1,200 member companies will continue our months-long effort to advocate for a deal that ensures equal treatment of all energy sources, because the current status of this blockade is unsustainable.”
In a statement to Heatmap News, Interior spokesperson Alyse Sharpe confirmed the agency is using its “current review process” on “federal resources, permits or consultations” related to solar projects on “federal, state or private lands.” “This policy strengthens accountability, prevents misuse of taxpayer-funded subsidies and upholds our commitment to restoring balance in energy development.” The agency declined to comment on SEIA’s request to Congress, though. “We don’t provide comment on correspondence to Congress regarding Interior issues via the media,” Sharpe said.
The senator spoke at a Heatmap event in Washington, D.C. last week about the state of U.S. manufacturing.
At Heatmap’s event, “Onshoring the Electric Revolution,” held last week in Washington, D.C. every guest agreed: The U.S. is falling behind in the race to build the technologies of the future.
Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, a Democrat who sits on the Senate’s energy and natural resources committee, expressed frustration with the Trump administration rolling back policies in the Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act meant to support critical minerals companies. “If we want to, in this country, lead in 21st century technology, why aren’t we starting with the extraction of the critical minerals that we need for that technology?” she asked.
At the same time, Cortez Masto also seemed hopeful that the Senate would move forward on both permitting and critical minerals legislation. “After we get back from the Thanksgiving holiday, there is going to be a number of bills that we’re looking at marking up and moving through the committee,” Cortez Masto said. That may well include the SPEED Act, a permitting bill with bipartisan support that passed the House Natural Resources Committee late last week.
Friction in the permitting of new energy and transmission projects is one of the key factors slowing down the transition to clean energy — though fossil fuel companies also have an interest in the process.
Thomas Hochman, the Foundation of American Innovation’s director of infrastructure policy, talked about how legislation could protect energy projects of all stripes from executive branch interference.
“The oil and gas industry is really, really interested in seeing tech-neutral language on this front because they’re worried that the same tools that have been uncovered to block wind and solar will then come back and block oil and gas,” Hochman said.
While permitting dominated the conversation, it was not the only topic on panelists’ minds.
“There’s a lot of talk about permitting,” said Michael Tubman, the senior director of federal affairs at Lucid Motors. “It’s not just about permits. There’s a lot more to be done. And one of those important things is those mines have to have the funding available.”
Michael Bruce, a partner at the venture capital firm Emerson Collective, thinks that other government actions, such as supporting domestic demand, would help businesses in the critical minerals space.
“You need to have demand,” he said. “And if you don’t have demand, you don’t have a business.”
Like Cortez Masto, Bruce lamented the decline of U.S. mining in the face of China’s supply chain dominance.
“We do [mining] better than anyone else in the world,” said Bruce. “But we’ve got to give [mining companies] permission to return. We have a few [projects] that have been waiting for permits for upwards of 25 years.”
