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In a recent ruling, the Supreme Court handed the oil and gas industry a significant procedural win in a decade-long legal fight over Louisiana’s eroding coastline. The decision changes where some of the cases will be heard, but it does not resolve the larger legal and policy problems at the heart of the litigation.

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Beginning in 2013, a group of Louisiana parishes led by Plaquemines Parish filed 42 lawsuits in state court against oil and gas companies under Louisiana’s 1978 State and Local Coastal Resources Management Act. The suits targeted oil-and-gas operations dating back to World War II and continuing for decades, alleging that companies violated Louisiana coastal law and that practices such as canal dredging and the use of earthen pits caused long-term damage to the state’s wetlands. One case reached trial, resulting in a $745 million jury verdict against Chevron and two other companies. Any damages recovered would go into a fund for coastal restoration, according to attorneys for the parishes.

The Supreme Court’s decision did not address whether the companies caused coastal damages. Instead, it addresses the narrower question of whether that issue should be decided in state or federal court.

Chevron argued that its predecessor held a federal contract during World War II to refine crude oil into aviation gasoline for the military, and that its Louisiana crude oil production during that same period was closely connected to that federal work. The Court ruled 8-0 in Chevron’s favor, allowing the case to proceed in federal court. Justice Alito did not participate because of a financial interest in one of the defendants.

The Court decided only part of the jurisdiction question and left other issues unresolved, so the Fifth Circuit will now decide what happens next. According to the parishes’ attorney, the decision directly affects 11 of the 42 cases, while the other 31 remain in state court. More broadly, the ruling could make it easier for federal contractors to move similar cases into federal court. 

Whichever court ultimately hears these cases, the fundamental problems with this retroactive litigation remain. I examined them in depth in an earlier piece, but they are worth revisiting here. 

>>>READ: Louisiana’s Coastal Crisis Won’t Be Solved in Court

Louisiana’s land loss has many overlapping causes, including reduced sediment from the Mississippi River, natural subsidence, sea level rise, hurricanes, and the levee system that disconnected the river from its delta. One scientific review concluded that it is probably impossible to assign precise weight to each contributing factor, making it difficult to attribute a specific share of damage to a single company in a specific place. 

The lawsuits also apply modern regulatory expectations to conduct from 50 to 80 years ago, before Louisiana had any coastal permitting system, even though the state benefited from the tax revenue generated by that activity for decades. The risk is that these lawsuits will discourage future oil and gas activity and reduce the economic benefits that industry provides to Louisianians.

These consequences are not theoretical. Research from the Pelican Institute suggests that Louisiana’s GDP share declined, drilling in state waters fell, and energy employment dropped since the lawsuits began. Meanwhile, Louisiana already has a more credible path forward in its science-based Coastal Master Plan, developed through nearly two decades of bipartisan work and updated every six years. Retroactive litigation is a flawed way to address a problem this complex. 

A Supreme Court Ruling Shifts the Legal Landscape on Louisiana’s Coastal Erosion Lawsuits

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This piece was initially published in The National Interest.

Last November, President Donald Trump launched the Genesis Mission through an executive order (EO) that outlines 26 National Science and Technology Challenges, ranging from autonomous scientific labs to fusion energy to artificial intelligence (AI)-driven grid operations. Embedded in that order is a directive to use prize competitions to get there. This is a smart policy because prizes are a growing but still underutilized tool at the Department of Energy (DOE). Now the DOE needs to run with it.

How Prize Competitions Accelerate AI Innovation and Energy Technology Deployment

Prize competitions not only drive new solutions to market but also incentivize rapid innovation. Rather than picking winners upfront, they set a challenge and pay when someone solves it. Want faster grid interconnection? Offer a prize for the AI model that cuts the timeline in half. You want better nuclear licensing? Put up a purse for the tool that eliminates the paperwork bottleneck. 

Prizes are also less risky for the federal government. They incentivize fast and innovative activity in the marketplace—something the market knows how to do well. They provide a strong incentive for a diffuse knowledge base, and critically, reward outcomes rather than outputs. It also requires less project management and internal risk for a DOE working to rapidly build new energy infrastructure for energy dominance, grid stabilization, and national security.

You want the government to run like a well-oiled machine and be a good steward of taxpayer dollars? Well, prizes aren’t miracle workers—and they aren’t the right tool for every job. But kidding aside, federal agencies are already using AI to improve efficiency and reduce administrative burdens. For programs where the problem is well-defined, the results are measurable, and competition will drive better outcomes, prizes can supercharge those efficiency gains. President Trump’s EO outlines why the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission is so necessary. China is racing to dominate artificial intelligence and energy technologies. Not to mention, America’s energy grid is straining under new demands, and higher electric bills strain families’ budgets. 

Overcoming Government Bureaucracy  

The federal government has a big opportunity to use a new playbook. The US government has a well-earned reputation for slow processes and creating more roadblocks for startups than necessary. Despite the best intentions and civil servants committed to working around red tape to help energy startups get to market, bureaucratic timelines too often move at a glacial pace, especially across administrations with varied priorities. 

The good news is DOE has used prizes before, and the results speak for themselves. DOE’s American-Made Challenges program has awarded over $100 million in prizes and helped launch hundreds of energy companies. Similarly, a recent article in the Journal of Technology Transfer outlined the successes of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)’s Grand Challenge in significantly accelerating robotics innovation and commercialization. The article documents how the challenge and prize challenges accelerated technology transfer by drawing in an unusually diverse mix of universities, defense contractors, and startups that would not otherwise have collaborated. 

Prizes work through the fundamental idea that you don’t need to know who’s going to solve the problem; you need to determine the need and make it worth solving. And you typically get much more bang for your buck with follow-on private investment and partners. In the DARPA robotics example, competitors collectively invested an estimated 50 times the prize purse in private resources. A well-structured prize doesn’t just buy a solution; it can catalyze an entire innovation ecosystem around one, providing enormous positive economic and environmental spillovers in the process. Importantly, those benefits trickle down to the consumers through products and ideas that make their lives easier, safer, and happier. 

A well-designed prize also gives the government a map: here are the innovators, here is the work worth backing. From there, its job is to build a pipeline of support that meets entrepreneurs where they are and grows with them: faster grants, flexible agreements, technical assistance timed to when it actually matters. Done right, prizes don’t just reward ingenuity. They create a foundation for the government to support it better.

AI Prize Programs for Energy, Science, and DOE Operations Under the Genesis Mission 

That is why it is so critical that President Trump included prizes as a mechanism to achieve the goals outlined in the Genesis Mission. In a new paper, we outline how an AI for the American Innovation Prize Program (AI2) is a concrete way to do exactly that. The paper outlines three tracks scaled to the challenge: AI for Science, AI for Energy Innovation, and AI for DOE Operations. Prizes ranging from ten thousand dollars for targeted tool evaluations up to $100 million for genuine moonshot breakthroughs in scientific foundation models or fusion energy. 

What makes this especially compelling isn’t just the structure, it’s who shows up. Prize competitions democratize innovation in ways traditional grants rarely do. The startup in Reno. The team of grad students who figured out a better quantum algorithm. The small energy firm that’s been working on a grid solution for three years without a government contract. The DOE scientist who is extremely frustrated by bureaucracy holding her work back. Prizes help unlock human ingenuity and entrepreneurial drive across the board. 

That democratizing effect matters in the context of the challenges Genesis has identified. For these, the commercialization challenge is harder; private capital can be skittish early on, and the people who could solve the problem aren’t necessarily the ones who understand the government. Prizes are among the best tools we have for finding solvers. 

Why AI-Driven Prize Competitions Strengthen US Energy Security and Competitiveness

America invented the internet, mapped the human genome, and put humans on the moon. We are not short on capacity for innovation. We are sometimes short on the creativity to unleash it, until now.

Prizes are not the only tool in the toolkit, but they are an extremely valuable one that can help the Trump administration accomplish policy objectives well beyond those set out in the Genesis Mission. Soliciting cutting-edge ideas from across the American innovation ecosystem will increase energy dominance, scientific leadership, national security, and economic competitiveness.

The Genesis Mission has set the mandate. The solutions are uncertain, but speed matters. If DOE implements AI2, it will provide the mechanism for talented and driven Americans to find the answers. 

How Prize Competitions Can Help Fuel America’s AI Energy Revolution

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Heatmap this week published a short but telling analysis of local opposition to major infrastructure, finding that data centers now face more organized pushback than wind farms in its tracking database. The piece uses that shift to illustrate a broader change in the politics of development: the backlash once associated mainly with renewable energy is now spreading to the digital infrastructure behind AI and economic growth.

Heatmap’s basic point is sharp and worth noticing: local opposition to data centers has now outpaced opposition to wind farms, with more than 270 data centers facing backlash versus 258 wind projects. That is a remarkable shift. For years, fights over energy infrastructure, especially wind and solar, were treated as the signature local land-use battle of the clean-energy era. Heatmap’s argument is that a new villain has entered the neighborhood meeting, and it wears a hyperscaler badge.

The piece also makes a more interesting structural observation. These fights are not just about ugly buildings, water use, or local politics. They represent a collision between demand and supply. Data centers embody the sudden surge in electricity demand tied to AI and digital infrastructure, while wind, solar, and transmission fights represent the parallel struggle to build enough supply to keep up. In that sense, Heatmap is really describing something larger than local controversy. It is describing a country drifting into a full-spectrum infrastructure revolt.

That is where the story becomes more than a curiosity. Heatmap notes that solar fights still outnumber data-center battles overall, but that the amount of data-center demand facing opposition now exceeds 51 gigawatts, nearly matching the scale of opposition surrounding solar in power terms. That should ring alarm bells. The United States is not just having trouble building generation. It is increasingly having trouble building the economic infrastructure that requires generation in the first place. We are objecting to both sides of the equation at once, then acting surprised when reliability, affordability, and growth start to strain.

The more important question is not whether data centers are becoming controversial. It is what that controversy reveals about the country’s broader inability to build. Communities are pushing back not only on the generation and transmission needed to support growth, but increasingly on the very facilities driving that growth. That creates a strange and dangerous loop: we object to the infrastructure that supplies power, then object to the infrastructure that needs power, and call the resulting constraint prudence.

The danger is that this backlash becomes another chapter in the national habit of romanticizing scarcity. First the country made it hard to build pipelines, transmission, and power plants. Now it is getting comfortable making it hard to build the facilities driving the next wave of industrial and technological growth. That is not prudence. It is a recipe for delay, constraint, and self-inflicted decline. If America wants to lead in AI, manufacturing, and energy abundance, it cannot keep treating every major project like an invasion.

Key takeaways

  • A durable response means building more generation, more transmission, and more local trust, not normalizing another veto point against needed infrastructure.
  • Heatmap reports that local opposition to data centers now exceeds opposition to wind farms in its database, with more than 270 contested data centers versus 258 wind projects.
  • The article’s central idea is that data centers have become a new flashpoint in local infrastructure politics, especially as AI-driven demand accelerates.
  • Solar projects still face more opposition overall, but the scale of contested data-center demand is huge, at more than 51 gigawatts.
  • The bigger story is not simply anti-data-center sentiment. It is that America is struggling to permit both the supply side and the demand side of a modern economy.
  • Treating data centers as a political problem to be blocked, rather than a growth challenge to be managed, risks worsening reliability pressures and slowing economic expansion.

The C3 Take

Heatmap is right to notice that data centers are becoming a new front in America’s infrastructure wars. But the real problem is not that these projects are controversial. It is that the country has become too comfortable opposing nearly everything that growth requires. If communities reject new generation, new transmission, and now the facilities driving new demand, the result will not be a more balanced economy. It will be a poorer, weaker, more capacity-constrained one. America does not need a new politics of stopping data centers. It needs a politics of building enough power and infrastructure to support them.

Heatmap: Data Centers Are the New Wind Farms

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Britain is preparing to raise windfall taxes on electricity generators unless they agree to long-term fixed-price contracts, in what amounts to one of the government’s most aggressive efforts yet to shield consumers from gas-driven power price spikes. The logic is politically seductive: if gas prices surge and legacy generators benefit from the market structure, the state can step in, grab the “excess” profits, and promise relief for households. But history has a nasty habit of humiliating that kind of thinking. Windfall taxes tend to punish success after the fact, muddy investment signals, and teach companies that when markets move in their favor, government may simply change the rules midstream.

The UK’s frustration is not hard to understand. Gas still sets electricity prices much of the time, even though renewables now make up a large share of generation, leaving households exposed to global fuel shocks they do not control. That makes the promise of “delinking” electricity prices from gas politically irresistible. But reaching for a bigger tax hammer is a dangerous way to pursue that goal. Once governments start treating profit as evidence of guilt rather than a signal to invest, they risk discouraging the very capital formation needed to build a more resilient system.

There is also a deeper problem here. Policies like this usually arrive wrapped in the language of fairness and stability, but they often weaken both. Investors respond to predictable rules, not retroactive punishment. Developers, generators, and capital providers need confidence that today’s policy environment will still make sense tomorrow. If that confidence erodes, the likely result is less investment, more risk priced into projects, and ultimately higher costs passed back to consumers anyway. The state may claim it is disciplining markets, but more often it is just injecting a fresh layer of uncertainty into an already strained system.

That is why this move deserves real skepticism beyond Britain. Windfall taxes have repeatedly failed to produce the tidy political outcomes promised for them. They are marketed as temporary, targeted, and consumer-friendly, but they often become a shortcut for governments unwilling to confront the actual structural causes of high prices: poor market design, inadequate supply diversity, permitting bottlenecks, and underbuilt infrastructure. It is much easier to tax a revenue spike than to reform a system. It is also much worse policy.

If other governments are tempted to follow suit, they should think twice. Stable prices do not come from punishing generators when markets tighten. They come from building more capacity, diversifying supply, improving market rules, and giving investors reason to keep deploying capital. When states start treating energy producers as piggy banks, consumers usually end up paying for it later.

Key takeaways

  • Other countries should be wary of copying a model that punishes profitable generation instead of fixing structural weaknesses in the power system.
  • The UK plans to raise its windfall tax on some electricity generators from 45% to 55% unless they accept long-term fixed-price contracts.
  • The policy is meant to reduce consumer exposure to gas-price shocks, since gas still sets electricity prices much of the time in Great Britain.
  • Legacy renewable, biomass, and nuclear generators are a key target because they can benefit when gas-driven market prices rise.
  • Windfall taxes may be politically attractive, but they can distort investment incentives and increase regulatory uncertainty.
  • History suggests these taxes rarely solve underlying market problems and can end up hurting consumers through reduced investment and higher long-term costs.

The C3 Take

This is the kind of policy that sounds clever in a press release and ages badly in practice. Windfall taxes do not create abundance, improve investment confidence, or build a more resilient grid. They punish success after the fact, blur market signals, and invite governments to substitute political improvisation for serious reform. If Britain wants lower prices and greater energy security, the answer is not to threaten producers when prices rise. It is to build a system with more supply, better rules, and less vulnerability to shocks in the first place.

Britain’s Windfall Tax Gamble Could Backfire

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Ember’s new Global Electricity Review 2026 points to a genuine shift in the global power mix. In 2025, renewables supplied 33.8% of global electricity, edging past coal’s 33% share for the first time in the modern power era. Even more striking, clean generation growth slightly exceeded the rise in global electricity demand, which meant fossil generation was essentially flat rather than climbing in lockstep with demand.

The biggest engine behind that change was solar. Ember says solar met 75% of global electricity demand growth in 2025, while AP reports solar output rose by about 30% and, together with wind, met 99% of net new demand. This matters because it confirms that renewables are no longer a boutique sideshow in the global system. They are becoming central to how countries meet rising power needs.

Still, the report does not justify easy triumphalism. The real bottleneck is shifting from generation to systems. As clean power grows, the harder work becomes moving that electricity across the grid, balancing it over time, and making sure supply remains reliable during periods when weather-dependent resources fade. Coverage of the report and related energy analysis point to the same next chapter: more transmission, more storage, better market rules, and enough firm capacity to keep power affordable and dependable as demand keeps rising.

That is where a center-right read of this report becomes useful. It should unsettle two lazy narratives at once. One is the insistence that renewables are too marginal to matter. The numbers no longer support that. The other is the fantasy that adding intermittent generation alone solves the energy challenge. It does not. A serious energy strategy is not about picking a single favored resource and calling it a future. It is about building an abundant system that prizes reliability, affordability, resilience, and competition.

The deeper lesson from Ember’s findings is that abundance requires follow-through. If policymakers want lower costs, rising living standards, industrial growth, electrification, and AI-scale power demand to coexist, then generation gains have to be matched by infrastructure and regulatory reform. The countries that win will not be the ones that produce the flashiest transition slogans. They will be the ones that can actually build, connect, store, and deliver power at scale.

Key takeaways

  • Renewables reached 33.8% of global electricity generation in 2025, slightly above coal’s 33%, marking a notable milestone in the global power mix.
  • Clean electricity growth slightly exceeded total demand growth in 2025, which kept fossil generation essentially flat.
  • Solar was the main driver, meeting about 75% of global demand growth according to Ember.
  • The next big challenge is not just adding generation, but expanding transmission, storage, and grid flexibility so that cheap power can actually be delivered when and where it is needed.
  • The report strengthens the case for an all-of-the-above, pro-abundance view: cleaner power matters, but reliability, firm capacity, and workable market design matter just as much.
The C3 Take

The most important lesson in Ember’s new report is not ideological. It is structural. The world is adding clean electricity at a remarkable pace, and that is a real achievement. But generation alone does not create an abundant energy future. What matters is whether countries can pair new supply with the transmission, storage, market reforms, and firm capacity needed to deliver reliable power at reasonable cost. The winning energy system will not be built around slogans or resource tribalism. It will be built around affordability, resilience, competition, and the ability to scale what works.

Ember’s “Global Electricity Review 2026” Is Out

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ZymoChem, the San Leandro, California-based chemical biomanufacturer creating sustainable alternatives for everyday products, announced that its bio-based and biodegradable Super Absorbent Polymer (SAP), BAYSE, now matches or exceeds key performance metrics of conventional fossil-fuel based SAPs, according to company data.

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The news is a significant milestone for the hygiene industry because most hygiene products like menstrual pads and infant diapers have relied on petroleum-based superabsorbents for decades. While highly effective at trapping moisture, these materials are notoriously difficult to decompose, persisting in the environment for hundreds of years and gradually releasing microplastics as they break down. And while there are some bio-based products available on the market, few can compete with conventional SAPS in terms of performance.

To date, the lack of reliable, high-performing bio-based polymer alternatives has made it difficult for the hygiene sector to decarbonize and for sustainable solutions to take hold at scale. Given the vast numbers of personal care products used globally every day––including millions of disposable diapers––ZymoChem’s latest innovation, BAYSE, is a game-changer for the industry.

“The hygiene industry has been waiting for a bio-based SAP that doesn’t make compromises. BAYSE is that material,” CEO of ZymoChem Harshal Chokhawala said in a news release. These results confirm that sustainability and performance are no longer in tension; manufacturers can now choose both.”

BAYSE’s bio-renewable polymers and monomers are produced using proprietary carbon-conserving microbes that convert renewable feedstocks, such as plants and agricultural waste, into high-value materials. The result is a product that is up to 50 percent  less expensive and up to 50 percent more efficient than competing alternatives, the company claims in its platform. Moreover, the entire bioprocess releases nearly no CO2 emissions. 

In a research paper released last month, ZymoChem tested BAYSE against leading petroleum-based SAPs under real-world conditions. The results showed that BAYSE absorbed fluid twice as fast as conventional materials in infant diapers. In applications such as period and postpartum care, it absorbed thicker fluids up to 3.6 times faster, minimizing the time moisture remains against the skin. 

Given that the global market for SAPs is primarily led by the hygiene sector, finding  a direct, drop-in replacement for the petroleum-based polymers used in hundreds of hygiene products is critical to decarbonization. BAYSE offers a no-compromise alternative that performs on par with commercial SAPs, and shows that innovation can drive environmental progress at scale by making cleaner products the better-performing, lower-cost option.

New Milestone Reached in Hygiene Industry as Zymochem’s BAYSE Rivals Fossil-Based Absorbents

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Indiana Gov. Mike Braun is doubling down on plans to make Indiana a national leader in nuclear energy, announcing a new partnership with Eli Lilly and Company to explore next-generation power options.

According to FOX 59, the agreement lays out a path for the state and the Indianapolis-based company to study nuclear energy solutions, including small modular reactors and other advanced technologies.

The effort is part of a broader push by Braun to bring more reliable, carbon-free energy to the state while driving economic growth. The agreement focuses on evaluating how nuclear energy could work in Indiana — from cost and regulation to environmental impact — and how future projects could be built and operated.

Read the full story at WDRB.

The C3 Take

This is a meaningful step for Indiana. Pairing state leadership with a major in-state employer like Eli Lilly signals that nuclear energy is moving out of the realm of abstract interest and into serious long-term planning around reliability, growth, and industrial competitiveness. The emphasis on studying cost, regulation, environmental impact, and deployment pathways is exactly the kind of practical groundwork advanced nuclear will require if it is going to play a real role in the state’s energy future. Just as important, it reflects a broader truth: if Indiana wants to support economic expansion and rising electricity demand without sacrificing reliability, it will need to think bigger about firm, scalable, carbon-free power.

Indiana pushes into nuclear future with Braun, Eli Lilly partnership

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The United Kingdom has been rapidly increasing its deployment of new renewable energy capacity in recent years, to the point that it now has some to spare during peak production hours. While the U.K. gradually increases its battery storage, the government is encouraging consumers to use more electricity during certain times of the day to help shift reliance away from fossil fuels to green alternatives.

Consumers are being asked by the government to use high-consumption appliances, such as dishwashers and washing machines, as well as electric vehicle (EV) chargers, during peak renewable energy production hours this summer, when more solar and wind power is being delivered to the grid. Energy suppliers will support the government’s efforts by offering free or discounted electricity during certain hours of the day when there is a surplus of electricity. The scheme is also expected to be extended to businesses and manufacturers.

The scheme expands upon the many initiatives already in place, with energy providers already offering over 2 million households the chance to pay lower electricity rates during off-peak times, to reduce the burden on the grid. However, it is the first time that a scheme will be rolled out to manage the surplus of clean electricity.

Read the full article at OilPrice.com

The C3 Take

This piece identifies a genuine challenge in the energy transition: adding more low-carbon generation is only part of the job. The harder and more important task is making sure the grid can absorb, move, store, and price that electricity efficiently and reliably. It is encouraging to see greater attention to demand flexibility and consumer incentives, but the broader lesson is that generation alone does not equal resilience. Real progress depends on the less glamorous work of expanding transmission, improving market design, and building systems that can handle abundance without congestion, curtailment, or higher costs.

Britain’s Renewable Energy Glut

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If Congress allows permitting reform to stall again, the United States will inevitably face higher energy costs, weaker energy reliability, and reduced geopolitical influence. Washington favors strong language and superlatives about resilience, competitiveness, energy dominance, and winning the future. But for all that rhetoric, policymakers don’t seem to feel the urgency of a major weakness at home.

That weakness centers on knowingly enabling paralysis. Each time geopolitical tensions flare, Washington suddenly is reminded that energy security remains important. Lawmakers issue urgent warnings. Experts quickly explain the fragility of global supply chains, power grids, and fuel routes. Then the moment passes, and the system that makes it painfully difficult to build remains untouched. America is not building enough anymore.

This avoidable cycle is rapidly turning into a major strategic failure. Sadly, permitting reform is often seen as a procedural issue, focusing on administrative timelines and regulatory details. This perspective is entirely incorrect. In a world of rising electricity demand, artificial intelligence expansion, industrial rivalry, and grid stress, permitting reform is not procedural. It is foundational to economic stability and national security.

Read the full article in the Washington Examiner.

The C3 Take

This piece makes an important and timely case: if the United States wants to lead on energy, affordability, reliability, and industrial growth, it has to be able to build the infrastructure those goals require. It rightly recognizes that permitting reform is not a narrow procedural concern, but a foundational question of execution in a moment defined by rising electricity demand, geopolitical uncertainty, and intensifying global competition. Just as importantly, it frames reform in a practical and responsible way, not as a rejection of environmental stewardship or public input, but as an effort to create a process that is clearer, more predictable, and better suited to the scale of the challenge. That is exactly the kind of seriousness this moment calls for.

Washington talks energy dominance. Without permitting reform, it can’t build

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The National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) was enacted in 1966 to protect America’s cultural heritage at a time when rapid development was destroying historic sites. Its core process, Section 106, requires federal agencies to consider how projects they fund, permit, or carry out affect historic and cultural resources.

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Though well-intentioned, nearly six decades later, Section 106 has become a source of uncertainty, delay, and rising costs for energy, transmission, and conservation projects. 

The law is purely procedural. It requires agencies to “take into account” impacts to historic properties, not to reach a specific outcome. However, unclear rules, inconsistent implementation and interpretation of requirements, and open-ended timelines have turned the process into a bottleneck.

A key problem is the lack of clear boundaries around what areas must be reviewed. Disputes over the Area of Potential Effects can quickly expand a project’s scope. Larger project scopes mean more land reviewed, more stakeholders, and a longer process. In one case, a three-mile transmission line upgrade was delayed because two agencies defined the scope differently.

Unlike NEPA, which now has statutory deadlines, Section 106 has none. Reviews can drag on for years, especially at the mitigation stage, where negotiations have no clear endpoint. In extreme cases, transmission projects have spent more than a decade in Section 106 review. Coupled with other permitting requirements, such as NEPA, ESA, and others, the process becomes even more burdensome.

Courts have at times treated NHPA as if it requires binding mitigation outcomes, even though the statute imposes no such obligation. The result is a system where developers face unclear expectations, duplicative reviews, and legal risk even after projects begin.

While some mitigation requirements have meaningfully preserved or restored historic sites, others, including interpretive signs, podcasts, and fitness lanes, appear symbolic at best, adding cost and delay without advancing the core goal of cultural preservation. 

>>>READ: How to Avoid Repeating the Potomac River Spill Fiasco 

The right reforms can restore predictability and efficiency while still protecting cultural resources. In a recent paper, C3 Solutions proposed five reforms.

Clarify the Scope of Review and the Area of Potential Effects

First, policymakers and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation should clarify the scope of review. Reviews should focus on impacts that are direct, proximate, and causal to the federal action, not broad or speculative effects. For projects involving multiple agencies, a lead agency should be designated to avoid conflicting interpretations.

Align Judicial Review with the APA and The Original Intent of the Bill

Second, policymakers should align judicial review of NHPA with the Administrative Procedure Act and clarify that the bill’s original intent is purely procedural. Courts should evaluate whether agencies followed the required process, not impose new substantive obligations that do not appear in the statute. Clear guardrails would restore predictability while preserving public input.

Digitize and Modernize the Process, much like Utah and Washington have

Third, policymakers should allocate funding and technical support to enable State and Tribal Historic Preservation Offices to build modern, centralized databases for cultural and historic resources. States like Utah have shown that when this information is organized and accessible upfront, conflicts can be flagged early, costs decrease, and timelines are significantly shorter. This would create a more efficient review process and retain strong protections for cultural places.

>>>READ: The Need for SPEED: Why Permitting Reform is Essential to Our Economic Progress and Environmental Ambitions

Expand the Use of Programmatic Agreements

Fourth, agencies should proactively look to expand the use of programmatic agreements for routine, low-impact projects. These agreements establish pre-approved frameworks for common activities, allowing agencies to focus time and resources where they are truly needed. In transportation and rural development, they have already saved millions of dollars and reduced review timelines from months to weeks.

Explore Ways to Voluntarily Incentivize Mitigation and Early Collaboration with Stakeholders

Finally, policymakers and agencies should explore voluntary, incentive-based approaches to mitigation. Instead of relying on open-ended negotiations, frameworks like the Clean Water Act’s mitigation banking or the Endangered Species Act’s safe harbor agreements could encourage early collaboration while providing developers with certainty.

NHPA’s purpose to preserve America’s history as a living part of community life is worth protecting. But a process that is unpredictable, duplicative, and slow ultimately undermines that mission by delaying the very projects that can strengthen communities and steward the land.

Section 106 is an important tool in preserving culture and history. But in the 21st century, it requires modernization. The right reforms can ensure cultural preservation remains alongside energy development and conservation.

Restoring Predictability to Historic Preservation Review

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