The Energy Permitting Reform Act would reduce climate pollution
By Dana Nuccitelli, CCL Research Coordinator
We at CCL have been advocating for Congress to implement clean energy permitting reform for nearly two years. Research has shown that if we don’t start building clean energy infrastructure faster, we will only achieve about half of the potential climate pollution reductions from the policies we’ve already passed, like the Inflation Reduction Act.
Recently, Senators Manchin and Barrasso introduced the bipartisan Energy Permitting Reform Act to try and address this problem. The bill includes provisions to speed up the permitting and deployment of a range of energy infrastructure, including clean energy and some fossil fuel projects
We recently got a report from an all-star team of highly-respected, expert energy modelers about the potential impact of this bill. They found that the Energy Permitting Reform Act will cut U.S. climate pollution, and potentially by quite a lot.
I gave a Citizens’ Climate University training to educate CCL volunteers about these important updates. Watch the full training here or read on for a recap:
The Energy Permitting Reform Act will cut carbon pollution up to 25%
Among the all-star modeling team:
- Jesse Jenkins at Princeton Zero Lab evaluated the impacts of the bill’s liquified natural gas (LNG) provisions.
- Resources for the Future (RFF) looked at the onshore oil & gas leasing.
- Third Way assessed the offshore oil & gas leasing.
- RMI estimated the impacts of the electrical transmission provisions.
These are some of the best energy modeling experts in the business, and we’re lucky to have them teaming up to evaluate the impacts of the Energy Permitting Reform Act.
The experts used very conservative assumptions to estimate the maximum increase that the fossil fuel provisions in the bill could have on climate pollution. For example, Jesse Jenkins considered the climate impact of all fuels that would be exported from LNG export facilities currently awaiting permits. And RFF considered a scenario in which the U.S. doubles the annual federal land offered to the oil and gas industry in lease auctions, which the bill would not require.
The oil and gas provisions were estimated to potentially increase America’s total 2030–2050 emissions from 1% to 4% (probably much closer to 1%), and the LNG export terminal provisions from a 4% reduction (if LNG exports mostly displace coal) to a 5% increase in climate pollution (if they mostly displace clean energy sources), most likely around zero impact.
Meanwhile RMI estimated that depending on how much electrical transmission and clean energy infrastructure we build over those two decades to meet power demand growth from data centers, artificial intelligence, and electrification, those provisions in the bill could reduce climate pollution by anywhere between 8% and 22% or more.
The modelers didn’t account for some other provisions in the bill, like the measures to boost permitting of technology-specific solutions like geothermal and hydroelectric power. Putting it all together, the Energy Permitting Reform Act could cut American climate pollution between 2030 and 2050 by up to 25%, but conservatively by around 10%. That’s a big deal!
Email your members of Congress to ask them to support the Energy Permitting Reform Act.
