House Republicans and Democrats sparred Wednesday over solutions to address the need to build and transmit more power to meet rising demand from artificial intelligence data centers.
The GOP-led Energy and Commerce Committee held a long-awaited hearing Wednesday on ways to boost transmission — a tepid signal of bipartisan interest in a key element of permitting reform talks.
But Republicans continued to resist Democratic-led efforts to give the federal government more power to approve, plan and coordinate transmission lines, by arguing states and localities are better situated to make those decisions.
“Permitting reform is necessary, but we need to correctly diagnose what issues are practically inhibiting efficient transmission development,” said Rep. Bob Latta (R-Ohio), chair of the Energy Subcommittee, who blamed bottlenecks in the project approval process under the National Environmental Policy Act, Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act.
