SPEED Act passes in House despite changes that threaten clean power projects

Summary

Both Levin and Davis pointed to a July memo from the Department of Interior that requires all wind and solar projects on federal land to receive higher-level approval from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. “The administration is not even returning the phone calls of project developers. They are not responding to applications being submitted,” Davis said. “That sort of approach is in stark contrast with the ‘white glove, concierge service’—and that’s a quote from the Trump administration—the service they are providing for fossil fuel companies to access our public lands.” The SPEED Act’s opponents also dispute the idea that NEPA reviews are one of the primary causes of permitting delays, arguing that reports from the Congressional Research Service and other groups have found little evidence to support those claims. “Often missing in the conversation around NEPA is the empirical research that’s been done, and there’s a lot of that out there,” said Jarryd Page, a staff attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, in a September interview with Inside Climate News. That research points to resource constraints as one of the biggest roadblocks, Page said, like not having enough staff to conduct the environmental reviews, or staff lacking adequate experience and technical know-how. Debate over NEPA and the reform of the permitting process will now move into the Senate, where experts say the SPEED Act will likely undergo further changes. “I think as the bill goes forwards in the Senate, we’ll probably see a neutral, across-the-board approach to making sure the process is fair for all technology types,” Xan Fishman, an energy policy expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center told ICN after Thursday’s vote. Fishman stressed it would be crucial to ensure permits for projects wouldn’t suddenly be cancelled for political reasons, but said he was optimistic about how the SPEED Act would be refined in the Senate. “It’s great to see Congress so engaged with permitting reform,” he said. “B...