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Permitting reform talks paused after administration halts offshore wind projects, witness says
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Summary
An unidentified committee member told the Senate Environment and Public Works panel that recent executive stop-work orders on offshore wind projects and what the speaker called repeated falsehoods by cabinet officials have prompted a pause in bipartisan permitting reform negotiations.
An unidentified member of the Senate Environment and Public Works panel said Wednesday that bipartisan efforts to streamline energy permitting are on hold after an executive-branch campaign the speaker described as unlawful and misleading.
The speaker opened the hearing by urging a ‘‘strong bipartisan permitting reform’’ but said trust has been eroded by what he called the administration’s ‘‘lawless, irrational, and unpredictable’’ actions. He faulted an early executive order that he said failed to define solar or wind as energy and criticized stop-work orders on offshore projects, including Empire Wind and Revolution Wind, as unjustified.
The speaker said courts have rebuked the administration’s actions. He noted that a stop-work order on Revolution Wind—described in the remarks as a project more than 80% complete with $4,000,000,000 invested—was ‘‘thrown out in court as arbitrary and capricious’’ and that multiple federal judges have been skeptical of the administration’s national-security pretexts.
The speaker attributed cost-savings estimates to court filings and affidavits, saying those documents asserted ‘‘hundreds of millions in consumer cost savings’’ and that grid operators place these projects ahead of fossil fuel generation because they are less expensive. He cited a claimed figure for Revolution Wind of 9¢ per kilowatt-hour entering an 18¢ per kilowatt-hour grid as an example of lower-cost generation.
He said the Interior Department has added ‘‘dozens of new layers of political review’’ for onshore solar and wind, and asserted that since those changes only one solar project has been approved. He also said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and other agencies adopted an ‘‘energy density’’ metric that in his view prioritized fossil fuels.
As a result of the administration’s behavior, the speaker said ‘‘Senator Heinrich and I have paused permitting reform negotiations,’’ while praising bipartisan work with Republican colleagues named in the remarks. He framed the dispute as a legislative-versus-executive problem and said the responsibility for resuscitating permitting reform now rests with the executive branch.
The speaker urged practical reforms—‘‘front loading stakeholder engagement’’ and disciplining an interagency process that he described as having grown into ‘‘incompetence and inertia’’—and pointed to early stakeholder engagement on Block Island and Rhode Island permitting as positive examples. He also called on industry leaders, including large electricity customers such as data-center operators, to press the administration to stop halting projects.
The hearing record does not show a formal vote or committee action on permitting legislation; the speaker said work will resume only after the executive branch demonstrates that it will cease the conduct he described as unlawful. The panel continued with scheduled testimony and discussion after the remarks.
