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The fate of permitting reform legislation that could smooth the way to all kinds of new and improved energy infrastructure — including transmission lines and renewables — is currently hostage to opaque discussions between Senate committee chairs. Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, told a Rhode Island business group earlier this week that “we’re actually in a pretty good place on permitting reform,” and that there was “maybe another week of negotiations.” Whitehouse’s Republican counterpart on the EPW committee, West Virginia Senator Shelly Moore-Capito, told Semafor on Friday that any bill has “got to pop out of here in the next 48 hours.”
If that’s going to happen, it will be because Republicans and Democrats have decided it’s worth it to get along. Any deal will eventually have to be voted on by the House, which has already produced several bills on a bipartisan basis, and even passed one — the SPEED Act — late last year.
Two of the busier House members on this issue are Scott Peters, a Democratic former environmental lawyer from San Diego, and Gabe Evans, a first term Colorado Republican representing a suburban and rural district north of Denver that includes wind farms and crude oil production. “The district that I represent truly is an all of the above energy district,” Evans told me.
Their latest effort is a bill aimed at smoothing out permitting for transmission development, especially interregional transmission. Last week, the two congressmen unveiled the CLEAR Act, seeking to apply a stricter set of standards for lawsuits against transmission projects that aligned with how natural gas and hydropower projects are treated under the Federal Power Act (it’s much harder to sue to stop these projects). Earlier this year, the two also sponsored the CERTAIN Act, a more comprehensive streamlining of federal permitting for energy infrastructure projects.
“We’re proud to have a lot of our work as the foundation for this, and I think if they send us over something that includes this, it’s got a really good chance of passing in the House,” Peters told me. Evans added that bringing forward bipartisan bills “gives a little bit more impetus to the Senate to know that the House is looking for these things.”
While the Senate’s deal will be up to the senators, Peters told me he envisions a broad permitting package that could include reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act to shorten permitting timelines, preventing the president from nixing individual projects, and reform Section 401 of the Clean Water Act which effectively devolves power to tribes and states to block a variety of interstate projects. “I think it’s coming together pretty well,” Peters said. “Obviously, we’re waiting for white smoke from the Senate.”
A permitting reform package may be one of the last major bills several bipartisan-minded House members get to vote on.
Election day is about six weeks off, and while Peters will likely have an easy time getting reelected for this eighth term, Evans is in a tough race. His purple-hued district is a target for the House Democratic campaign arm, which is hoping to flip it to former Colorado House of Representatives member Manny Rutinel, who worked as a lawyer at the environmental group Earthjustice. The Cook Political Report rates the race as toss-up, and Nate Silver gives Rutinel a roughly 75% to win.
But Rutinel won’t be getting any campaign help from Peters.
When I asked Peters about the timing of releasing a bill that could boost an endangered Republican’s bipartisan bona fides less than two months before an election, Peters told me that he and Evans had been working on it “for a while,” and that “my colleagues know that I’ve worked with Republicans to get problems solved.”
He said he wasn’t “participating in Gabe’s election” and wasn’t giving any money to his campaign, but also that he wouldn’t campaign Evans’ challenger, despite the opportunity to bolster his own caucus.
Peters is not shy about praising Evans. “What I appreciate about Gabe is that it takes a little bit of initiative to separate yourself from the majority — particularly when you’re in the trifecta — and do your own thing. He’s been a good partner in helping find ways to reduce process and make things go faster,” he told me.
Evans told me that he and Peters met early in this Congress, as Evans was getting settled into his new office in the Longworth building. “We’ve built the relationship over the last two years with a lot of the different areas that we’ve collaborated on.”
“I always try to meet the members of my committee and find out who will work with me. And I was fortunate to find Gabe,” Peters said.
“I do want to win the majority in the next Congress,” Peters went on, but “the norm should be that we figure out ways to work together to solve problems, and, you know, we’ll let the voters of Colorado 8 decide who to send me.”
Evans, for his part, told me that he had to work with Democrats to get anything passed as a member of a minuscule Republican minority in the Colorado statehouse, and that the 40-plus members of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus have agreed not to campaign against each other. “There’s 385 other members that you can go pick fights with,” he said.
