House Democrats unveil green transmission bill

The legislation has attracted dozens of co-sponsors. Whether it gains any traction this Congress remains to be seen.

December 13, 2023

Two of the House’s biggest clean energy enthusiasts Wednesday dropped their long-anticipated pitch on transmission in a bid to coalesce Democrats around a landmark permitting plan to accelerate renewable energy development.

The bill from Democratic Reps. Sean Casten of Illinois and Mike Levin of California would ease transmission build-out, expand renewable energy and fix the country’s jumbled electricity system.

And with 76 original cosponsors representing both the progressive and more moderate factions of the House Democratic Caucus, the authors of the “Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act” hope they can credibly claim their bill is their party’s “consensus” legislative package on energy policy.

Their legislation, which Casten said was a “tentpost on what is Democratic energy policy,” bundles new proposals with bills that have been previously introduced and vetted.

It would force the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to ensure that utilities account for greenhouse gas emissions when setting rates. It would also boost the commission’s authority to improve transmission lines that span multiple states.

And it would create a new Office of Electricity at FERC to enhance offshore wind deployment — an attempt to align with President Joe Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts by 2030.

In addition, the measure tries to reduce pressure on the grid and deploy more clean energy projects on public lands. It also aims to improve community input for environmental reviews as well as require climate considerations in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) analyses.

The politics are exceedingly tricky. Congressional Republicans say they support an all-of-the-above energy strategy but have shown little interest in standalone transmission bills. Instead, they see the issue as a bargaining chip to get what they really want: changes to environmental laws like NEPA or the Endangered Species Act to streamline pipelines, highways, bridges and other energy projects.

Some Democrats, in turn, have indicated no desire to compromise with Republicans on permitting changes that could lead to more oil and gas projects in exchange for meeting their own goal: powering the country with renewable energy.

Even Levin, in an interview, made clear he viewed Republicans with suspicion in the permitting debate.

“I see some of the Republicans, when they talk about permitting reform, it’s code for letting the fossil fuel industry gut environmental and community protections, and that’s not what we need,” he said.

While members of both parties and chambers insist conversations are ongoing around a bipartisan permitting deal, a more likely scenario is that Levin and Casten will use this bill to lay the groundwork for the next Congress, where Democrats hope to retake control of the House while keeping the Senate and the White House, too.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is not an official co-sponsor at this time, but his spokesperson, Christie Stephenson, said Jeffries “is grateful for their efforts ... and looks forward to continuing to work with these Members to advance commonsense solutions.

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Longtime permitting reform skeptics like House Natural Resources Committee ranking member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat of the Natural Resources Subcommittee on Water, Wildlife and Fisheries, have signed on as supporters.

Last year, the two progressives rallied against Sen. Joe Manchin's fossil-fuel-friendly permitting plan, charging that the West Virginia Democrat’s measure would overburden communities that the federal government had long neglected. In effect, they branded “permitting reform” as a boon for polluting industries.

Huffman and Grijalva also decried the changes to permitting laws secured in the larger deal to raise the debt ceiling this spring, which made revisions to NEPA while virtually ignoring transmission.

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By:  Emma Dumain, Kelsey Brugger
Source: E&E Daily