[A side deal with Joe Manchin attempts to approve a pipeline in
his backyard and speed through permitting rules. Progressives should
make their own conditions.]
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PERMITTING REFORM BILL FLIPS LEVERAGE TO PROGRESSIVES  
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David Dayen
August 9, 2022
The American Prospect
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_ A side deal with Joe Manchin attempts to approve a pipeline in his
backyard and speed through permitting rules. Progressives should make
their own conditions. _

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) speaks with reporters about the Inflation
Reduction Act, August 1, 2022., J. Scott Applewhite / AP Photo

 

It took a couple weeks for The Narrative about the Biden era to change
from a failed presidency to a consequential restorer of policy
ambition. Despite containing about one-ninth of the domestic spending
initially envisioned in the Build Back Better bill, the Inflation
Reduction Act’s $369 billion investment in energy production,
climate mitigation and advanced manufacturing, along with the
extension of the American Rescue Plan’s affordability measures
[[link removed]] for
12 million Affordable Care Act exchange customers and the beginnings
of potentially significant prescription drug price reforms for
seniors, was enough to rewrite the script.

But there’s one more bill left on the table, the result of a side
deal between Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and the Democratic leadership.
Blandly known as “permitting reform,” this initiative (which could
not go into the IRA because it isn’t budgetary in nature and
therefore is ineligible for reconciliation) would, according to its
supporters, accelerate timelines for energy projects nationwide by
effectively shortening the time allotted for reviews. It is scheduled
get a vote in the House and Senate by the end of September
[[link removed]].

It’s an interesting inversion of a dynamic that we saw last year.
When Build Back Better was split between infrastructure and social
spending, progressives helped pass the infrastructure bill based on a
promise of a vote later on the spending package. What they eventually
got took nearly a year and was quite watered down. Now it’s Manchin
advancing the spending bill, based on a promise to get permitting
reform.

_MORE FROM DAVID DAYEN_ [[link removed]]

With the IRA done in the Senate and set to wrap this week in the
House, progressive members have no reason to hold themselves to
Manchin’s deal, and are free to assess whether permitting reform
makes sense on the merits. It does not. If Manchin wants another
victory for his favored fossil fuel industries, he should either get
the Republicans he just backstabbed on board to do it, or give
something more to Democrats in exchange.

Some progressive observers have talked themselves
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the idea that permitting reform is necessary to speed up renewable
energy projects. Such a mindset reflects a core tenet of supply-side
progressivism
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idea that overzealous application of laws designed to restrict
building need to be recalibrated.

It’s a compelling yet misleading theory. Permitting is really about
power, and if the entity wanting to build has enough, they can cut
through red tape with little resistance. Less than ten years ago there
was no such thing as an American oil export industry. Today the U.S.
is the biggest oil and gas producer in the world, the sixth-largest
exporter
[[link removed]] of
oil, and the second-largest natural gas exporter
[[link removed]].
The entire architecture for that transformation had to be devised,
permitted, approved, and built—and it was, with rapid speed,
including thousands of wells, transportation infrastructure like
roadways and pipelines, liquefied natural gas export terminals, and
much more.

In fact, the sector wildly overbuilt
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that decade, with investors losing so much money during the pandemic
crash that they simply refuse to produce
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There are a lot of problems with the investor-driven oil and gas
model, but permitting is not one of them; the industry literally got
too much done.

In other words, if there’s money to be made, and particularly if you
couch it as a national security imperative
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permitting problems have a knack for melting away. Ultimately, that is
the likely path for renewables: The IRA creates a massive market for
the deployment of solar and wind and other innovations, and
environmental reviews are unlikely to derail that swiftly moving
train. Moreover, the idea that the National Environmental Policy Act
will unfairly hold back the green transition is just massively
overstated
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a problem beyond random anecdotes. Just one out of every 450 NEPA
reviews are challenged in court, and federal agencies win at around
the same level as they do in other environmental cases.

In the case of a couple of pipelines, it’s true, residents directly
affected in disastrously toxic ways have been able to get the legal
system to agree that their lives aren’t worth sacrificing to
oncoming pipelines. That includes the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a
Manchin priority that would deliver 2 billion cubic feet of fracked
gas per day from West Virginia to Virginia, equivalent to 25 new coal
plants. Appalachian residents bitterly oppose
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project, in some cases physically blocking the pipeline’s path.

The permitting reform bill, which we know little about save for a
one-page summary courtesy of _The Washington Post_
[[link removed]], could
also be called the “complete the Mountain Valley Pipeline” bill.
In fact that’s an entire section of the one-pager, which requires
immediate action from federal regulators to approve the project and
strips future legal jurisdiction away from the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals—which has consistently blocked
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pipeline because of impacts on endangered wildlife, pristine forest,
and human health
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shifts it to the D.C. Circuit, which often sides with federal agencies
in these matters.

Even this doesn’t assure Mountain Valley’s completion
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as it wouldn’t exempt the project from environmental laws. But the
venue-shopping for a friendly circuit court should take care of those
challenges. And Manchin’s special pleading for Mountain Valley
reinforces how permitting isn’t a problem as long as you have
powerful friends.

Elsewhere, the one-pager compresses the time allotted to National
Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews to between one and two years,
streamlines Clean Water Act reviews and certification, coordinates
interagency reviews with a project lead, forces the president to set a
list of 25 “high-priority” infrastructure projects of all types
under various criteria (reducing energy costs, expanding energy trade,
and potential for decarbonization), and forces agencies to act quickly
on court challenges.

The deal gives Democrats who are disinclined to gut the permitting
process some leverage.

All of these things could be done tomorrow with no legislation, and
surely would be done (practically every administration talks about
faster project approvals) if the resources were made available. “If
you want to improve permitting, don’t weaken the laws,” writes
[[link removed]] Erik
Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental
Law Center. “To move with agility, strengthen agency culture to
provide for creative, agile decision-making and provide agency staff
resources to act.”

Instead, this bill creates a countdown for permitting reviews that
probably cannot be achieved. While there is some funding for NEPA
implementation in the IRA, crashing down the timelines would raise the
monetary need to a level that isn’t provided. Depending on the
language of the permitting reforms, either the timelines will remain
exactly the same because of the lack of state capacity, or the
timelines will just cut off reviews before they’re adequately
completed, force corner-cutting, and heighten the possibility for
errors or oversights. That will be exploited
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at least at first, by fossil fuel interests. And once that
infrastructure is built, it will be supremely difficult to dislodge in
future years, weakening the climate benefits by drawing out the green
transition timeline.

This is part of what has oil and gas interests pleased with the IRA
and its companion
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But green groups, which have been enthusiastic about the IRA, aren’t
on board with permitting reforms. The Sierra Club, which has fought to
shut down coal plants for years, has savaged the deal
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as did Earthjustice
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Other than the one-pager, there is no bill text
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something that must be done in the short period when Congress returns
in September. Schumer wants to attach it to a continuing resolution to
fund the government, to jam it down the throats of Democrats who may
not agree with permitting deregulation, but who don’t want to see
the government shut down.

That’s clever, but also gives Democrats who are disinclined to
gut of the permitting process some leverage. If permitting is to be
accelerated, it would have to be fully funded, by definition. That
should be insisted upon. Or maybe progressives have something else in
mind to serve as the price for their vote. Without some concession,
there is no need to break environmental laws and threaten communities.

Republicans would presumably be interested in deregulation and could
supply enough votes to power this through (it would need 60 votes in
the Senate anyway, so Republicans will be critical to the outcome).
But as they spent a week holding a temper tantrum over Manchin’s
alleged betrayal on the IRA, they may not be in a forgiving mood.
Anyway, we know what they want: Last week, Senate Republicans got
Manchin to agree to overturn a rule
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consideration of climate change in NEPA rulemaking. That rule change
won’t pass the House on its own, but to get Republican votes for
permitting reform, something similar is likely to be the ask.

Progressives generally got rolled in the Build Back Better process,
and they were always going to get rolled, because of the need for that
final 50th vote from Manchin (and Kyrsten Sinema). The permitting
bill’s dynamic is different. It may pass anyway in a bargain between
oil industry-backed Democrats and Republicans. But as they weren’t
party to the deal, there’s no reason for progressives to participate
in that process. And there’s good reason for them to hold out for
better terms. The Democratic leadership made the deal, so they can
find the votes for it.

_DAVID DAYEN is the Prospect’s executive editor. His work has
appeared in The Intercept, The New Republic, HuffPost, The Washington
Post, the Los Angeles Times, and more. His most recent book is
‘Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.’_

_Read the original article at Prospect.org.
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_Used with the permission. © THE AMERICAN PROSPECT, Prospect.org,
2022. All rights reserved. _

_Support the American Prospect [[link removed]]._

_Click here [[link removed]] to support the Prospect's
brand of independent impact journalism_

* Inflation Reduction Act of 2022; Climate Crisis; Fossil Fuel
Subsidies;
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* pipeline
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* West Virginia
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* Congress
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* legislation
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* Joe Manchin
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