WASHINGTON – After years of negotiations, Joe Manchin and another U.S. Senator have introduced a permitting reform bill that could speed approvals of energy and infrastructure projects.
Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyoming) introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, which would shorten some federal environmental reviews and set limits on court challenges. The bill is seen as a way to help both renewable and fossil fuel energy sources by “accelerating the permitting process for critical energy and mineral projects of all types in the United States.”
Manchin said the nation is “blessed with abundant natural resources” that have powered it and allowed it to help allies around the world.
“Unfortunately, today our outdated permitting system is stifling our economic growth, geopolitical strength, and ability to reduce emissions,” Manchin said. “After over a year of holding hearings in the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, thoughtfully considering input from our colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and engaging in good faith negotiations, Ranking Member Barrasso and I have put together a commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation that will speed up permitting and provide more certainty for all types of energy and mineral projects without bypassing important protections for our environment and impacted communities.
“The Energy Permitting Reform Act will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader. The time to act on it is now.”
Barrasso agreed.
“For far too long, Washington’s disastrous permitting system has shackled American energy production and punished families in Wyoming and across our country,” he said. “Congress must step in and fix this process. Our bipartisan bill secures future access to oil and gas resources on federal lands and waters.
“We fix the disastrous Rosemont decision so that we can produce more American minerals instead of relying on China. We permanently end President Biden’s reckless ban on natural gas exports. And we ensure we can strengthen our electric grid while protecting customers. This legislation is an urgent and important first step towards improving our nation’s broken permitting process.”
The act would shorten timelines before, during and after litigation on all types of federal authorizations for energy and mineral projects without changing any existing rights to seek judicial review.
The bill would establish a 150-day statute of limitations from the date of the final agency action on a project, require courts to expedite review of legal challenges and set a 180-day deadline for federal agencies to act on remanded authorizations.
Regarding onshore energy and minerals, the act would accelerates leasing and permitting decisions for all types of energy projects on federal lands without bypassing environmental and land-use laws.
It would ensure lease sales include oil and gas acreage that has actually been nominated, set deadlines and doubles production targets for renewable energy permitting on federal lands, eliminate duplicative permit requirements for oil and gas production on non-federal surface land, streamline environmental reviews for low-disturbance renewable, electric grid and storage projects as well as set deadlines to process applications to lease federal coal.
It also would modernize geothermal leasing and permitting processes, ensure hardrock mining (e.g., critical minerals) projects can use federal land for mine support activities by establishing a new mill site claim, without changing existing law on the discovery of minerals and dedicate revenue from new mill sites to abandoned hardrock mine reclamation.
As for offshore energy, it would require the Secretary of the Interior to hold at least one offshore wind lease sale and one offshore oil and gas lease sale per year from 2025 through 2029, subject to minimum acreage requirements, without bypassing environmental reviews. Without these provisions, there will be several years through 2029 where both offshore wind and offshore oil and gas leasing will not take place under current law.
With electric transmission, the act would reform existing backstop siting authority for interstate electric transmission lines and requires interregional transmission planning. These provisions provide two pathways for transmission development that include clear standards for cost allocation among customers that benefit from a project.
The bill includes key features and guardrails that protect consumers, benefit communities and respect state authorities, such as requiring qualifying transmission projects to improve electric reliability, allocating costs only to customers that benefit using a minimum specified list of electric reliability and affordability benefits, preserving current law ensuring that states have at least one year to respond to applications before applicants may go to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, allowing FERC to approve utility compensation to communities hosting transmission facilities, applying equally with respect to all electric generation resources and to on- and offshore facilities, prioritizing use of existing rights-of-way and advanced conductors to lower impacts and costs and including mechanisms to resolve disagreements and noncompliance.
Regarding electric reliability, the bill would require FERC and the North American Energy Reliability Corporation to assess future federal regulations significantly affecting power plants and offer formal comments to federal agencies about any effects on electric reliability.
With liquefied natural gas exports, it would sets a 90-day deadline for the Secretary of Energy to grant or deny LNG export applications following environmental reviews, with applications deemed approved if the Secretary fails to meet the deadline. It also would ensure fact-based decision-making by requiring the Secretary to base decisions on DOE’s existing LNG economic and emissions studies, unless and until new studies are completed.
The bill also would subject any new study to peer review, notice and public comment and other requirements of the Information Quality Act.
Regarding hydropower, the act would allow FERC to extend start-construction deadlines for certain existing hydropower licenses.