The House of Representatives has approved the SPEED Act, a bill that would bring sweeping changes to the nation’s environmental review process. It passed Thursday afternoon on a bipartisan vote of 221 to 196, with 11 Democrats in favor and just one Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, against.
Thursday’s vote followed a late change to the bill on Wednesday that would safeguard the Trump administration’s recent actions to pull already-approved permits from offshore wind farms and other renewable energy projects.
Prior to that tweak, the bill would have limited the Trump administration’s ability to alter or revoke a federal permitting decision after the fact. The new version, adopted to secure votes from Republican representatives in Maryland and New Jersey, carves out an exception for agency actions taken between January 20 and the day the law takes effect.
"Last-minute changes to the SPEED Act undercut the bill’s intent to provide certainty to American business,” Rich Powell, the CEO of the Clean Energy Buyers Association said in a press release after the bill passed. “We hope the Senate will now take this language and strengthen those protections for existing and new projects needed to maintain grid reliability and meet growing electricity demand.”
At a high level, the SPEED Act would hasten federal permitting by restricting the evidence that federal agencies consider during the environmental review process and limiting the amount of time a court can deliberate over challenges to federal decisions. It would also disallow courts from vacating permits or issuing injunctions against projects if it finds that a federal agency violated NEPA. The changes would apply to permits of all kinds, including for oil and gas drilling, solar and wind farms, power lines, and data centers.
Environmental groups were generally against the bill. “Far from helping build the clean energy projects of the future, the SPEED Act will only result in an abundance of contaminated air and water, dirty projects, and chronic illnesses with fewer opportunities to hold polluters accountable in court,” Stephen Sciama, senior legislative council for Earthjustice Action, said in a press release on Thursday.
But proponents, such as the conservative energy group Clearpath Action, argue the bill will enable American industry to “invest and build with confidence” by cutting unnecessary red tape, improving coordination across agencies, and setting clearer rules and timelines for judicial review.
In House floor testimony on Thursday morning, Republican Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, the SPEED Act’s lead sponsor, said the bill had the backing of more than 375 industry groups and businesses, and bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. “The SPEED act will deliver the energy and infrastructure Americans need,” he said.
The bill lost at least one significant industry supporter after Wednesday’s changes, however. The American Clean Power Association, which had previously joined the American Petroleum Institute and others in a letter urging the House to pass the bill, withdrew its support, calling the new language a “poison pill” that “injects permit uncertainty, and creates a pathway for fully permitted projects to be canceled even after the Act’s passage.”
The Solar Energy Industries Association also denounced the bill’s passage.
Contrary to Westerman’s assertion, the bill’s fate in the Senate is far from certain. “Even if the House passes this bill today, it is going nowhere in the Senate,” Democratic Representative Jared Huffman of California asserted on the floor on Thursday. “What a missed opportunity to tackle a serious issue that Democrats were very interested in working on in good faith.”
Some Senate Democrats came out in opposition of the bill even before the late-breaking amendments. Senators Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico told my colleague Jael Holzman that the bill did not do enough to ensure the buildout of transmission and affordable clean energy, but that they “will continue working to pass comprehensive permitting reform that takes real steps to bring down electricity costs.”
Some see getting the SPEED Act through the House as merely a starting point for a more comprehensive and fair permitting deal. Democratic Representative Adam Gray of California told Politico’s Joshua Siegel Thursday that he was voting in favor of the bill despite the last minute changes due to his faith that the Senate will hammer out a version that provides developers of all energy stripes the certainty they need.
His Californian colleague Representative Scott Peters, on the other hand, voted against the bill, but committed to getting a deal done with the Senate. “We need to get permitting reform done in this Congress,” he said on the House floor Thursday.
