Permitting Reform

Floor Speech

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Mr. HEINRICH. Mr. President, I am here today to join my colleague Senator Whitehouse in talking about permitting reform.

I want to start with a story from my home State of New Mexico. Right now, across my State and Arizona, hundreds of workers are putting the finishing touches on a 3.5-gigawatt wind farm and a 550-mile transmission line.

For context, 3.5 gigawatts is roughly the equivalent of 3\1/2\ nuclear reactors. This project is literally the largest clean energy project in North American history, bigger than the Hoover Dam. That is pretty unbelievable.

But what is even more unbelievable is that the permitting process for that transmission line and that generation started over 17 years ago, and the project is being energized, as we speak. Think about that. It took nearly two decades to get the permits needed to build the project. That is 17 years of redtape. That is 17 years without the jobs this could create; 17 years of lost income, lost local spending, lost tax revenue; 17 years without the energy our Nation needs to grow; and 17 years without the roughly $20 billion of economic impact on the southwestern part of our country that we are finally seeing--because the reality is that electricity is what powers our communities, our innovation, our economies, and our lives. And electricity has powered this country since the 1880s.

But, right now, we are facing an energy crisis of the Trump administration's own making. First, electricity is becoming prohibitively expensive. While we know that permitting reform will help lower costs, the Trump administration is dismantling the permitting process that we use to build new energy projects and get cheaper electrons on the grid.

Put simply, costs are high. We need reform, and the President is blocking our ability to do just that. It is no secret that, right now, Americans' electric bills are going through the roof. Since Trump took office, electricity prices have risen an average of 13 percent in just a matter of months. That is double digits in well under a year.

Beyond the growing costs, demand is growing too. Grid Strategies, the power sector consulting firm, predicts electricity demand will grow 32 percent by 2030, just 5 years from now. Across New Mexico and the country, people are looking at their bills and asking how they are going to find the money to keep their lights on.

The answer is that Americans need more affordable energy, more electrons on the grid, not less, and they need it now. But we can't build a future using the last century's infrastructure and redtape. We need to set up a system that can reliably get to a yes or a no on a permit in 2 or 3 years, not 10, not 17.

We know that permitting reform can work. Scientists at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory estimate that by 2050, transmission expansion could save $270 to $490 billion--billion with a ``b.'' And for every dollar spent on new transmission, over $1.50 would be saved in system costs. That is a 150-percent savings margin. That is a deal that is hard to argue with, and it is one of the reasons why I have been such a strong advocate for Congress taking up bipartisan permitting reform.

But instead of working to get Americans more affordable energy, the Trump administration has been orchestrating a reckless, vindictive assault on new energy projects.

On July 15, the Interior Department began requiring Secretary Burgum's personal review and approval of every single wind and solar project on public lands, not to mention things as trivial as rights of way. What this really turned out to be was a de facto moratorium on new projects, new electrons on the grid. And so far, 22 gigawatts--the equivalent of two New York Cities--of solar, storage, and wind have been stalled because of this new review requirement.

That doesn't even include other actions from the administration. We have seen stalled an additional 116 gigawatts of energy. If we are counting, that is the equivalent of powering 12 New York Cities. Or, to put it bluntly, more than half of all the new power planned to be built in the United States over the next few years is tied up in one way or another.

Let me repeat that. This administration has halted more than half of all the new power planned to be built in the United States, to be brought onto the grid over the next 4 years.

And it gets worse.

President Trump's Department of Energy canceled 26 projects that would make our power grid more reliable. The Department of Energy estimated the transmission built through these projects would have helped add 35 gigawatts of clean power to the grid over the next 5 years. Now, that is gone too. That is over 17 New York Cities' worth of power that the Trump administration has stalled, canceled, or taken away.

The truth is that permitting reform in this building has not been a partisan issue. It is about building big things again in the United States, providing hard-working Americans, skilled trades union people with affordable energy, growing our economy, and a good job.

But to do any big energy project, you need a permitting system that actually works. Right now, when Americans need more energy than ever before, our permitting system is frozen in place. It definitely isn't going to work if Federal Agencies ignore statutory timelines, stall approvals, issue illegal stop work orders on partially constructed, fully permitted projects, pause leases, and cancel projects that were already under construction.

So what this administration is doing doesn't just undermine one of our cheapest sources of power; it wrecks the trust that is needed with the executive branch to do bipartisan permitting reform. It poisons the well.

Certainty is what is required for developers, for utilities, for consumers to benefit from faster permitting. Any permitting deal is going to have to guarantee that no administration of either party can weaponize the permitting process for cheap political points.

By raising electricity prices and killing American jobs, this administration has made it crystal clear that they are not interested in permitting reform or bringing down the price of energy.

The bottom line is this. The Trump administration needs to follow the law. They need to reverse their illegal stop work orders, and they need to start approving legally compliant energy projects--full stop.

Finally, I will say one last thing because something that the Senator from Rhode Island said bears repeating. The challenge to doing permitting reform is not in this building. Oftentimes, the problem of getting to yes is in this building. It is not the chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee. It is not the chairwoman of the EPW Committee. It is this administration that is poisoning the well. If we can turn that around, then I think we can all get back to the good work of trying to make our permitting system work for our country and for our economy.

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