Posted on April 18, 2023 by Jeremy Harrell
This op-ed was originally published by The Washington Times on April 18, 2023. Click here to read the entire piece.
America’s energy demands are rapidly increasing. Some estimates say the U.S. will need to double the capacity of our grid by 2050 if there is any chance of meeting net-zero goals.
Financing and building enough clean energy infrastructure projects to keep up will not be easy. But under the current regulatory environment, it’s procedurally impossible. Delays that can last over a decade are making projects more expensive, impeding America’s ability to deploy billions of dollars of capital that would create American jobs, enhance U.S. energy security, and reduce emissions.
The current system benefits those who seek to delay as opposed to those who seek to build. That dynamic may have made sense four decades ago when policymakers enacted laws focused on stopping bad outcomes. Today, this system is outdated. The pace and scale necessary to build clean energy infrastructure projects to reliably meet our energy demand and lower emissions is not something the authors of the 1970s environmental laws could have imagined.
Fortunately, fixing this outdated, broken system is at the top of the agenda for Republicans and many Democratic policymakers this Congress. House Republicans have rightly put permitting reform front and center this year, passing with bipartisan support their signature energy package, the Lower Energy Costs Act, as H.R.1.
Click here to read the full article
