Supporters cite lower costs; opponents question weakened environmental safeguards
The expected vote comes during the lame-duck session, after Democrats won the midterms following months of criticism aimed at Republicans over high energy prices. The Senate is expected to hold an initial vote next week on legislation introduced in September by a bipartisan group of senators. If the measure does not pass both chambers of Congress before Democrats take over in January, the legislative process starts over.
The Wall Street Journal said the measure still had a chance to advance despite bitter ideological divisions on many issues. The report described broad agreement that the current federal permitting system needs to change to bring energy bills down and meet electricity demand that is rising rapidly, partly because of artificial intelligence.
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act would smooth progress of transmission projects that underpin the green-energy buildout, require data centers to cover transmission costs, and curb federal agencies’ ability to revoke permits. The legislation has united oil-and-gas companies and clean-energy developers, which have complained for decades about delays in building pipelines, power cables and other infrastructure. Its advocates say the bill would boost growth, lower costs and get more energy projects online.
A host of energy trade associations, from American Clean Power to the Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, are clamoring for the bill to pass. Their backing highlights a central tension in the measure: energy companies and clean-energy developers want faster approvals, while environmental groups are concerned about weakened reviews and safeguards.
Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the House Natural Resources Committee, has said the bill weakens environmental curbs and reduces the influence of Native American tribes and other groups, without guaranteeing an end to what he called President Trump’s “war on renewables.” Before the midterms, Huffman said Democrats should wait until the next Congress and push for a deal more advantageous to renewables. The prospect of more Democratic reinforcements arriving in January could bring other members of the party around, according to the report.
John Miller, an energy analyst at investment bank TD Cowen, now gives the bill a 25% chance of passage, down from 40% before the election because more Democratic reinforcements are expected in January.
Xan Fishman, who leads the energy program at the Bipartisan Policy Center, handicaps the bill’s chances at 75%. Fishman said the crucial change in recent years is that the clean-energy push has given Democrats a reason to support reform, even at the cost of alienating environmentalists who rely on reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act and other regulations. The legislation would curb the scope of those rules, and many green advocacy groups are bitterly opposed.
Others remain divided. Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, wrote that the bill’s transmission provisions “are good for clean energy—really good,” but questioned whether the gains would outweigh those for oil-and-gas producers and lamented the weakening of environmental safeguards.
In a separate email note, President Trump told The Wall Street Journal that the rise in oil prices, rather than the war itself, was the biggest liability contributing to Republican losses in the midterm elections.
A market recap in the newsletter said clean-energy stocks gained after the midterms while AI power plays dipped. It said Democrats would be unable to push through pro-renewables legislation with Trump in the White House, though expectations that his administration might make more energy-policy concessions lifted wind and solar stocks. The victories of many Democrats who rode a wave of hostility toward data centers could also hurt companies that sell gas turbines and other power equipment.
In another item, The Wall Street Journal’s newsletter reported that self-driving electric trucks haul 90 tons of coal on battery power around the coal mine in Hulunbuir, China, and that their battery packs are big enough to power a typical American home for three weeks.
The newsletter also reported that science is reinventing “chocolate”: the world’s supply of cocoa beans is in crisis, with drivers including extreme weather—drought followed by flooding—and economic crises that have impoverished growers. There is good news, the Journal noted, as long as readers are willing to eat chocolate grown in a vat or made from something that isn’t a cocoa bean.
The Wall Street Journal framed the key question as who stands to benefit most and what happens to U.S. emissions in the decades to come. Modeling published this week by Kevin Kircher, an assistant professor at Purdue University, found that easier permitting would increase fossil-fuel use and emissions compared with a scenario in which the reform is not enacted. The report also cited other climate and energy experts whose calculations concluded that the bill, with its compromises, offers a path to a cleaner energy system.
One reason green-energy groups believe the bipartisan permitting bill would play to renewables’ advantage is a disparity in federal reviews: transmission projects take twice as long as pipeline projects for their environmental impact statements to be reviewed under the National Environmental Policy Act. An analysis published this week by Rhodium Group found that the bill’s measures could nearly triple the build rate of new transmission lines, bringing more green energy online. Rhodium also said the measures would boost the growth of U.S. liquefied-natural-gas exports.
Which assessment proves correct may depend partly on how courts interpret the many hazy passages that lawyers are currently scrutinizing in the 417-page text. Fishman said, “We’re just not going to know that for a few years.”