Jared Huffman Wants to See Some Changes to the Senate’s Permitting Bill

The California Democrat and current ranking member of the House Natural Resources Committee is suspicious of all the “now or never.”

The most important voice in Congress criticizing the Senate’s bipartisan energy permitting deal is Representative Jared Huffman.

A California Democrat who previously worked in environmental legal advocacy, Huffman has long been among the most impassioned lawmakers on climate issues. Under the first Trump administration, his voice was often the loudest calling for oversight and accountability on energy and climate policy. Under the second Trump administration, he has been a spirited defender of offshore wind.

Should Democrats take control of the U.S. House of Representatives in the coming midterm elections, as expected, then Huffman is first in line to become chair of the lower chamber’s Natural Resources Committee. This makes him one of the few people able to armchair quarterback permitting talks in Congress right now.

The proposed legislation currently on the table, known as the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, or BAAJA, would fundamentally reshape how federal project permitting happens. It would constrain National Environmental Policy Act reviews. It would radically alter transmission approvals. It would let companies sue the government for damages if they can show that an agency was unduly discriminating against them based on fuel type. It would limit state and tribal authority to object against projects under the Clean Water Act. And it would make this whole process more transparent by instituting digital reporting requirements.

Huffman thinks it also gives too much benefit to oil and gas interests, and is an unnecessary capitulation to fossil-friendly Republicans who will likely lose power in this November’s midterm elections, anyway. He wants Democratic lawmakers to wait until after election day to consider what they do with the bill.

I reported on Congress for years and often spoke with Huffman in the Capitol hallways; he knew me on a first-name basis. So last week, when a friend pointed me to a tweet of his criticizing the Senate bill by quoting my writing, I took note. His issue concerned the discrimination provision in the bill, which sets a rolling five-year average for approvals as a baseline for what constitutes normal regulatory behavior. Successful lawsuits under this provision would be paid out of the Judgment Fund, a Justice Department account Trump has used for his offshore wind developer buyouts.

This part of the bill, Huffman wrote, “might pay some clean energy developers money from the judgment fund when they are screwed, but nothing to actually approve their projects. This is potentially a replay of the fake settlements that have bought out offshore wind projects,” he added.

I reached out to Huffman’s team and asked to talk about what he meant by that. What followed was a 20-plus-minute back-and-forth about the future of permitting reform in the U.S. and what may happen after a midterm election defined by public anger over a rush to build another type of large-scale infrastructure: data centers.

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

So let’s start with your tweet. You quoted a portion of our story about BAAJA that I had written about the “permitting certainty” provisions in the bill, and specifically the fact that developers could be awarded damages under the bill for discriminatory treatment. Could you elaborate on your point?

I don’t want to get too deep into the weeds, but this is the big thing being offered as an end to the war on clean energy, which was always the threshold matter before you get to a bipartisan permitting deal.

It is built on this framework, basically, of cutting checks from the judgment fund. And I believe that requires some close scrutiny and consideration because we have seen this gamed already to the tune of $4 billion to buy out offshore wind developers.

Well I know this can get quite technical, but the underlying point you were making was, this may not be as helpful as people think. I guess I was just wondering if you can you walk me through —

It depends what you want.

If you’re a clean energy developer and you’re worried about your shareholders and your balance sheet, this gives you at least some money when you get screwed. And it may come with some strings attached, like you have to turn around and invest it in [liquified natural gas]. That’s been the playbook from the Trump administration.

If you’re a clean energy CEO — some of them, at least — that helps you mitigate risk. That’s probably better than nothing and will be attractive to some people. But if you care about climate policy [and] whether this is a meaningful assurance of permitting certainty to renewables, I think there’s a lot more to question here.

You also said in your tweet that there’s nothing in the bill to get projects approved. Can you speak to that? Because those who negotiated it clearly say otherwise.

Well, there are shot clocks and all sorts of other things that are designed to speed things up. There’s also broad categories of exemptions — categorical exemptions and other things like that, most of which will benefit fossil fuel projects.

I have no doubt there’s going to be permitting acceleration and certainty for fossil fuel projects. You also have this five-year baseline mechanism being codified here that will further cement a high level of fossil fuel projects for many years to come, and will really operate as a ceiling.

By:  Jael Holzman
Source: Heatmap

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