ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN POLITICO’S SURGE NEWSLETTER
PERMITTING PARLOR: Where’s President Donald Trump on permitting reform? That’s one of the biggest questions in Washington today.
Trump is quick to trumpet his opinions on social media. But he has been conspicuously silent this week as his administration has stumbled into a fight over wind farms that could tank the delicate permitting deal between the White House and Senate Democrats.
“If he is in favor of something, he says so. If he is opposed to something, he says that, too. When he doesn’t care about something, you can tell by the silence,” Mike McKenna, a longtime Republican energy lobbyist who briefly worked at the White House in Trump’s first term, wrote in a note to clients.
Actions over words: Others say there are concrete signs that the president supports the permitting deal, which would fast-track huge infrastructure projects like pipelines and solar arrays.
On Thursday, the White House said it had started to review long-delayed permits for two onshore wind projects, the first in a batch of 30 permits that had been sitting on the Defense Department’s desk.
One industry insider texted Surge to say that was a positive indication that Trump is serious about passing permitting legislation. Another said the administration had been asking energy companies for positive statements about the bill, in a bid to rally support. The American Petroleum Institute headlined a letter with 137 trade groups doing exactly that Thursday.
“The big question was … is the White House going to go to bat for this, or is it just going to be a-nice-to-have? And based on our readout of the situation now, it looks like they’re going to go to bat for it,” said Devin Hartman, executive director of the Lighthouse Energy Institute, a free-market think tank focused on electricity policy.
Others aren’t so sure.
The Trump administration has sought to remand permits for four offshore wind projects in recent weeks, picking a scab that has threatened to derail the talks multiple times over the last year. Adding to that, it targeted Revolution Wind — a completed project in Rhode Island, the home state of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, one of the Democrats negotiating the permitting deal.
“That’s probably not accidental,” said McKenna, who opposes permitting reform because he said it gives too much power to the government over transmission projects.
But it could be unintentional, others said.
“If the choice is between some ‘art of the deal’ 3D chess conspiracy theory or bureaucratic timing, I’m going with the latter,” said Travis Fisher, who worked in the first Trump administration and has advised the U.S. Department of Energy in the second.
The White House provided a fiery response when asked why Trump hasn’t weighed in.
“This story relies on comments from irrelevant outsiders who have no input, insight, or influence in the ongoing efforts to get this legislation across the finish line,” spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement. “Hundreds of private-sector companies and trade associations across all energy sectors have been very outspoken in their support for the bill and the Administration’s continued efforts to advance it.”
Step back: The palace intrigue risks obscuring the big picture: Republicans and Democrats are desperate to address rising energy demand and concerns over affordability.
Both parties have made concessions to broker the deal that led to the permitting bill named the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.
Take a tweak to Sec. 401 of the Clean Water Act. The bill would limit state authority to review water quality permits. That has been a priority for the oil and gas industry ever since it was used to thwart two pipeline projects in New York a decade ago.
“States have used it as a veto right,” Sen. Alan Armstrong, an Oklahoma Republican, told Thomas Hochman’s “Right of Way” podcast this week. Armstrong is not any old Republican. He was the CEO of Williams Cos., the pipeline company behind the New York projects, until earlier this year.
Democrats are getting their own victories. Utilities have traditionally knocked down any proposal that infringed upon their local transmission monopoly. Democrats say that contributes to permitting roadblocks that stop wind and solar projects.
The permitting bill could overcome those barriers by enabling states to refer utilities to federal regulators to investigate uneconomic transmission projects and allowing them to hold a competitive solicitation for new transmission projects serving large consumers like data centers.
In political terms, the provision shows that utilities’ influence is on the wane and that a growing number of Republicans increasingly see transmission as necessary to solving rising electricity demand — not just renewables, Hartman said. That’s part of the reason he thinks the White House is on board with the legislation.
“They see a real win here for energy affordability both on the permitting and the transmission side,” he said.
So where’s Trump? The White House has been releasing supportive statements about permitting.
Yet Trump himself has remained silent. Surge asked the White House on Friday if the president has been briefed on the permitting bill and why he hasn’t spoken publicly about it. We have yet to hear back.
Until then, the questions will linger.