Tell Congress to pass the SPEED Act!

As of 2023, the U.S. had far more already-proposed market-desired solar and battery capacity waiting to be built than there was electricity-generating capacity from all sources already built! Permitting delays are a major bottleneck slowing and eventually killing clean energy projects in the “interconnection queue.”

The SPEED Act, a bipartisan permitting reform deal which would make it harder to sue to stop energy projects, just passed the House Natural Resources Committee. It now needs to pass the full House and Senate to be signed into law.

Critically, it includes an “anti-executive-sabotage” amendment that would prevent the President from rescinding permits for energy projects — which Democrats may be willing to agree to in order to stop the current mass sabotage of clean energy, and Republicans may agree to in order to prevent a future Democratic leader from halting fossil fuel projects. Discussions are underway about adding a “time limit” clause to prevent a sneakier de-facto clean energy sabotage via interminable delays.

The EIA reports that clean energy is on track to provide over 90% of new-build capacity in America in 2025 despite an onslaught of White House attacks. Now that the economics are on the side of clean air, permitting reform overwhelmingly benefits the clean energy revolution and it must be an absolute top priority for climate action.

“The most basic strategy is simply to get out of the way: give the benefit of the doubt to someone building a solar farm or a wind turbine or a battery…

The group I belong to – older white people – is the group that’s best at suing to stop things, the best at working political connections to slow things down. And sometimes we shouldn’t…We also have to reduce the regulations that get in the way of change. Right now, remember, there are more than enough clean energy projects to provide all the power we need just awaiting approval in this country.”

— Bill McKibben, Here Comes the Sun.

Consider the situation here. This White House is trying to prop up a dying fossil fuel industry with late-Soviet levels of cronyism and corruption. They’ve canceled many planned clean energy projects on federal lands and waters with no plausible excuse!

They’ve canceled clean energy tax credits, they’re trying to deindustrialize the country with investment and job-killing tariffs, and they’re trying to shovel more subsidies at fossil fuels even though market interest is drying up. (The biggest new coal mining lease of U.S. federal land in decades recently auctioned the rights to 167 million tons of coal from lands in Montana. It received just 1 bid of $186,000 — economically non-viable). They’re even abusing executive power to force money-losing and air-polluting coal plants to stay open when their owners would prefer to shut them down!

And yet, clean energy is still on track to provide over 90% of new-built U.S. power capacity in 2025. In these conditions. Imagine what it could do if the executive branch wasn’t constantly sabotaging and undermining solar, wind, and battery power, and if outdated red tape was removed to let the huge backlog of proposed clean power actually get built. America could be seeing an unprecedented building boom in abundant clean energy right now, bringing lower electricity bills for families — like what’s already happening in China, Australia, Chile, and the European Union.

Unfortunately, many environmental movement leaders made a grave strategic error by opposing the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, a similar bipartisan permitting reform deal which subsequently foundered and paved the way for the current White House weaponization of red tape to strangle clean energy. This dynamic may well happen again with the SPEED Act. It would have at least made sense from an emissions perspective in the 2010s, but opposing permitting reform is now completely outdated, a lose-lose for America and the climate based on a failure to recognize the speed at which the world is changing. We need to pass the SPEED Act, with as many strong safeguards against presidential sabotage that Congress can agree to include, to unleash abundant American clean energy!

Tell Congress to pass the SPEED Act!