Tell Congress to pass the SPEED Act!

A new bipartisan bill for desperately needed energy-focused permitting reform, the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act (H.R.4776), has emerged in the U.S. House of Representatives! It’s already won the support of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, as its many provisions include an exemption from the increasingly hyper-onerous NEPA review process for rural electric cooperatives receiving federal grants. A cosponsor is Jared Golden, D-Maine.

“Being a good steward of our environment doesn’t mean we must tolerate a yearslong permitting process that is onerous, overly complex and ripe for litigation abuse

America must get back into the business of building. We need modern infrastructure…

A country as advanced as the United States must be nimble enough to build what we need, when we need it.”

— Rep. Jared Golden, D-ME.

This is just one of many possibilities for permitting reform. The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus recently released a proposed framework for a permitting reform deal. Furthermore, of course, Congress must act to reclaim its constitutional role as an independent legislature and hold the executive branch accountable for its capricious and illegal random cancelations of American energy projects from the Grain Belt Express to Revolution Wind.

America’s permitting-by-lawsuit system is arguably *the* primary reason why we have been so woefully under-building electricity-generating capacity compared to China at the Dawn of the Solar Age. It would be great if we could pass this to help empower the market to build more of the amazing clean power sweeping the world, despite a hostile White House!

As it stands, a single hypothetical geothermal project might trigger NEPA review requirements six different times, adding years to project development times.

Clean energy is on track to provide 93% of all new U.S. electricity-generating capacity buildout in 2025, and there’s a backlog of gigawatts more that people want to build but can’t, so it should really be a slam-dunk to support a bill that will help accelerate clean energy buildout! In 2024, Congress considered a similar permitting reform bill that was ultimately defeated, which kept the permitting barriers slowing clean energy in place and set the stage for the current federal sabotage efforts that are further harming many vital projects. Please don’t make that same mistake again! Congress should act to pass the SPEED Act and help unleash American clean energy.

Tell Congress to pass the SPEED Act!