Negotiations on a long-elusive bipartisan energy permitting overhaul are likely to drag out beyond the August recess and into the heart of midterm election campaign season, when lawmakers would face daunting political hurdles to get a bill over the finish line.
In the latest episode of the POLITICO Energy podcast, Senate Energy and Natural Resources ranking member Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) argued permitting reform would still be viable this Congress even if negotiators fail to strike a deal by their summer recess target.
Heinrich said the White House continues to make striking an accord more difficult because of ongoing attacks on renewable energy projects and rulemaking to ease approvals beyond what Democrats find acceptable. Heinrich suggested Democrats are prepared to wait until the Trump administration shows more signs of changing its posture.
“I don’t think it’s too late,” Heinrich said if talks continued into the fall. “What’s most important is we land on something that has broad enough support in both caucuses. Congress is working really hard to try and land this. The White House is not helping that process in any way, shape or form.”
Heinrich said the White House “consistently throws up new challenges” and pointed to a bevy of actions he suggested Democrats would want to be curtailed or reversed before agreeing to a deal.
That includes the Department of Defense’s blockade on wind project approvals and the Interior Department’s elevated reviews and scrutiny for all wind and solar projects on public land.
Interior has begun to ease up on some solar approvals, but Heinrich is also peeved at a new Trump administration proposal to roll back National Historic Preservation Act tribal consultation requirements.
Heinrich has been negotiating more modest NHPA changes as part of a potential comprehensive deal to ease energy project approvals of all types — from solar and wind farms to long-distance power lines to pipelines.
“None of those things are helpful,” Heinrich said of the Trump administration’s actions. “I’m not a red line kind of person generally, and I want to land this thing, but the White House has been a consistent problem for creating the kind of consensus or relative consensus you need to actually get something passed in Congress.”
‘Worthy goal’
Despite the long odds, Senate negotiators are not totally giving up hope of clinching an accord soon.
“We’re trying to work together to come up with something that we can share with the caucus before the recess, so we’re not having to start from scratch,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, told POLITICO. “It may not happen, and it’s fine if it doesn’t, but it’s a worthy goal.”
Indeed, Whitehouse and Heinrich are planning to meet with their Republican negotiating counterparts EPW Chair Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.) and Energy and Natural Resources Chair Mike Lee (R-Utah) this week after several weeks of intense staff-level talks, a sign that major outstanding issues are being elevated to the principles, according to two people familiar with the closely held negotiations.
But other senators in both parties tracking permitting talks are acknowledging the prospects for a deal before the August recess are fading, even as they projected optimism that a deal could come together later.
“If there’s a deal, it can come together in like five days,” Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told POLITICO, nodding to the bipartisan consensus around key elements that would form a final bill.
“Deadlines are imaginary,” Schatz said. “This is just a matter of whether the Trump administration wants to maintain its ban on clean, inexpensive energy. We’re just not going to do it until they lift their ban.”
Republicans too said they aren’t fretting the passage of time, even as they grow impatient at the Democrats’ negotiating stance. Sen. Alan Armstrong (R-Okla.), a former oil and gas executive who has been pushing for a permitting accord, said Democrats should ignore Trump administration actions and focus on locking in legislative language that imposes restraints on the executive branch’s authority to block or stall permits.
“It’s not like the fossil fuel industry hasn’t dealt with the other side of the same coin, but I don’t think we ever said, ‘Well, that’s it. We’re not going to talk to you about long-term solutions,’” Armstrong said. “People want to vent about that, but at the end of the day, they understand legislation is actually the cure for the very thing that they’re complaining about.”
Heinrich said he agreed with the sentiment that Congress should take back control of the permitting process, as Democrats press for significant measures to restrain the president’s power to cancel or stall energy project permits.
“Both sides now recognize that to the extent that we can remove administrative discretion from the process, we should do it,” Heinrich said. “Because the shoe’s on the other foot in a couple of years. If we want to have any positive impact on the energy costs that we are seeing applied to consumers today, then we need to be able to build big things, and taking the politics out of it is a positive.”
‘Lame duck is a better moment’
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has told colleagues he would prioritize floor time for permitting reform after the August recess in September, as POLITICO has previously reported.
But Congress will likely be returning to a busy floor schedule — with pending issues including Iran war funding and preventing a shutdown — and the chamber is scheduled to be back in recess for all of October ahead of the midterm elections.
That has some senators looking ahead to the post-election, lame-duck period when a permitting bill could advance. If Democrats win one or both chambers in the election, that could give both sides incentive to strike a deal before power changes hands.
“The lame duck is a better moment,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.). “Both Republicans and Democrats know that, for both of us, this is probably the best opportunity. Because Donald Trump’s not going to sign a Democrat permitting reform bill.”
