Levin and Davis both cited a July memo from the Department of the Interior that requires elevated sign-off from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum for every wind and solar project on federal land.
“The administration isn’t even returning project developers’ phone calls. They aren’t responding to submitted applications,” Davis said. “That kind of approach stands in sharp contrast with the ‘white glove, concierge service’—and that’s a quote from the Trump administration—the assistance they’re providing to fossil fuel companies to access our public lands.”
Opponents of the SPEED Act also reject the notion that NEPA reviews are a leading cause of permitting slowdowns, pointing out that analyses from the Congressional Research Service and other organizations have found little evidence to support those claims.
“What’s often missing in discussions about NEPA is the empirical research that exists, and there’s a lot of it,” said Jarryd Page, a staff attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, in a September interview with Inside Climate News.
Page said that research highlights limited resources as a major bottleneck — for example, too few staff to carry out environmental reviews or personnel who lack sufficient experience and technical expertise.
The debate over NEPA and permitting reform will now move to the Senate, where analysts expect the SPEED Act to be further revised.
“I expect that as the bill moves forward in the Senate, we’ll likely see a neutral, across-the-board approach to ensure the process is fair to all technology types,” Xan Fishman, an energy policy expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center, told ICN after Thursday’s vote.
Fishman emphasized it will be important to prevent permits from being abruptly revoked for political reasons and said he was hopeful about how the Senate would refine the SPEED Act.
“It’s encouraging to see Congress so engaged on permitting reform,” he said. “Both sides of the aisle recognize the need to do better.”
This article first appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization covering climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here.
