This piece was originally published on the Washington Examiner.

After the failure of the Manchin-Barrasso Energy Permitting Reform Act in the last Congress and with the zone flooded by executive action, legislative approaches to permitting reform in a new Congress are also kicking into gear. There has been a groundswell of support for reforms of the National Environmental Policy Act since the Bush administration. While the Trump administration has taken decisive action to push permitting reform onto the agencies, legislative action remains vital to an energy abundance agenda. One critical step forward would be Reps. Rudy Yakym (R-IN) and Jimmy Panetta’s (D-CA) newly reintroduced bill, Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act.

The act requires the Council on Environmental Quality to prepare an annual report, starting in July, that revives and consolidates three reports the CEQ has previously prepared. The first is an annual NEPA litigation survey that was published from 2001 to 2013 and reports on NEPA litigation data. The second is a report on the length, number of drafts, costs, and five-year trends of these data for environmental assessments and environmental impact statements; this report was previously prepared in 2019 and 2020. The bill’s third provision requires reporting on the duration of a project’s NEPA review and a description of 10-year trends; this was previously reported in 2018 and 2020. 

The data covered by these provisions — NEPA’s litigation, paperwork, and temporal burdens — will provide actionable information to further justify bipartisan action by Congress to end the massive obstacle NEPA presents to building new energy projects and every other government objective. Permitting reform is low-hanging fruit for increasing state capacity and cutting ineffective red tape, with NEPA being the largest target. But many other permitting burdens must be addressed, such as those under the Clean Air or Clean Water Acts or the Endangered Species Act. (The latter two of these were addressed by President Donald Trump’s day one National Energy Emergency executive order.)

Yakym describes the objectives of his bill: “[B]y identifying and tracking the bottlenecks in NEPA, we can reform and streamline the permitting process, ensuring projects don’t wither on the vine.” If what gets measured gets done, then this bill is trying to lay the groundwork for future action on permitting by measuring the burden that NEPA imposes through litigation, paperwork, and preparation time. 

Trump’s recent executive order has sapped the CEQ of much of its onerous power, rescinding the Carter administration executive order that gave CEQ’s guidance regulatory power. Despite the likelihood of major gains in permitting reform under this administration, these executive actions are not as durable as bipartisan legislative solutions.

>>>READ: Keep Permitting a Priority in 2025

Durable policy solutions to permit reform are necessary to outlast this current administration and provide the certainty companies need before investing significant capital in new major projects requiring extensive permitting. The failure of the Manchin-Barrasso Energy Permitting Reform Act to become law in the last Congress presents a fresh opportunity for bolder, more aggressive reform. There has been a coalitional consensus that the perfect cannot become the enemy of the good, and incremental gains on permitting reform are an imperfect good that has come to garner widespread support. Truly effective and lasting NEPA reform must address the protracted delays and frivolous lawsuits this bill’s reporting requirements document. 

Yakym notes that “the federal permitting process can get bogged down by unnecessary delays, making it harder to improve infrastructure and advance clean energy projects critical to addressing climate change.” These are the exact sorts of projects needed to unleash American energy and promote “all of the above” energy solutions by building new infrastructure for clean firm power. And these are the sorts of projects necessary to drive the energy transition toward lower emissions power sources. 

>>>READ: Broken Permitting Cuts Short Net-Zero Ambitions

But this did not stop the Climate Justice Alliance, Sierra Club, and other groups purportedly promoting solutions to climate change from condemning the bill when it was introduced last Congress. In their statement, these groups applauded the Inflation Reduction Act for “making the review process more efficient and meaningful,” but at the same time, they opposed the bill because it should instead be focused on “how costs were avoided, and how negative health and environmental impacts were mitigated or averted as a result of” the review process.

As the New York Times has noted, NEPA and permitting obstacles are slowing down the transition to cleaner energy sources, which these groups champion. If these groups cared more about reducing emissions than political sides, they might see the value in bills such as this.

The Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act is an important step in the right direction for durable congressional action on permitting reform. By requiring the newly renovated CEQ to report on the burdens imposed by NEPA, Yakym and Panetta’s bill can be a legislative seed that can bud into much more sweeping action on permitting reform.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.