I’m with you, Sam, on the new #permittingreform bill that “just say no” carbon hawks like Bill McKibben are fighting. On LNG exports, as you write, “renewables are winning the future globally. Developing Asian economies are building gigawatt-scale solar farms by the dozen, and adding a little more American LNG to the market in addition to the Qatari and Russian LNG already available isn’t going to stop that.” On the overall need for speed in USA energy system development, you are right again: “Permitting reform makes it a lot easier to build new stuff in general, and the overwhelming majority of the new stuff getting built in America these days is cleaner and better for the planet than the old stuff it’s replacing.”
Yes! Seems like pragmatism is feasible now. The bill will hand both sides of the energy equation opportunities to expand, but we’re on the winning side now, so the advantage for clean energy will be exponentially larger. As a news-weary Brit, this is the first time I’m hearing about this, but now I’m crossing my fingers for this as much as I would be as an American.
"The bill will hand both sides of the energy equation opportunities to expand, but we’re on the winning side now, so the advantage for clean energy will be exponentially larger."
You just brilliantly summed up my article in a sentence - thank you so much!
Great piece on the “Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform bill!" Grist called the bill a "devil's bargain" this morning, so your piece is really helpful in clarifying the data many in the movement need to see. I think another under-appreciated change in recent years is the capital discipline enacted at oil companies, shifting from drilling to paying dividends, so allowing for more oil projects doesn't for sure mean more projects we begin digging. I'm a big fan of CCL too, and given their non-partisan stance, I think we have to recognize that any bill passed without bipartisan support is not going to be long-term durable with congressional grid lock and constant shifts in power...
You nailed it. As McKibben himself has written, environmentalists need to learn how to say “yes” sometimes. This is a time for pragmatic progress, not for dogmatic stagnation. The energy revolution is already beating fossil fuel dinosaurs.
I agree with the article. I think a weakness in the argument, however, from the supply-side perspective, is that it does not address whether the benefits to fossil fuels in other sectors may outweigh the benefits to renewables in the electricity sector.
But I also think that supply-limiting strategies are overvalued by McKibben and many environmentalists. Limiting supply increases to match demand reductions would be great, but fossil demand reductions, including through building more renewable supply, are essential.
I see very little discussion of how the US dramatically reduced coal generation without ever (or hardly ever) directly opposing and shutting down any coal mines or coal trains. The reduction of coal supply was done through reducing the demand for coal for power plants by supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy development, and opposing coal plant construction and continued operation when renewables or natural gas alternatives were cheaper.
California has cut its use of natural gas for power production in half, not by closing pipelines or gas production, but by substituting renewable energy and batteries for gas generation. We can reduce the demand for gas further by continued expansion of EVs and heat pumps in the transportation and building sectors. Of course, energy efficiency can make a big difference in all these cases.
Without a great expansion of clean electricity and transmission, there is no way we can meet our climate goals. But we can still meet those goals even with some amount of new fossil supply production. Limiting fossil infrastructure could help by limiting surplus production and induced demand through price decreases. But it is not as essential as reducing fossil demand by greatly incresing our clean energy infrastructure.
I appreciate your break-down of this bill and it's details. I definitely didn't know enough about it.
Personally what stirs my heart and mind is absent from this bill, as it is from most discussions about these topics, which is the subject of pushing for overall reduction of energy use, rather than trying to support current (and growing) levels of consumption though alternative means. I say this as a lover of wild places who opposes new sacrifice zones for new energy installations and for all the new or expanded mining needed to support it.
Im not going to pretend to know enough about the details of the policy to make a strong argument. But I do anecdotally see even climate activists buying into the idea that non-renewables are able to put-compete renewables at a purely economic scale. It fulfills this narrative of climate activists as underdogs, fighting the good fight against profit-hungry oil companies. But right now, the momentum is in our direction. We are building more clean energy, and there is a growing demand for it. If renewables become accessible, desirable, and profitable, non-renewables lose their teeth.
I see a similar thing happening with big agriculture—more people going organic, regenerative, etc because it is actually more profitable than the alternative.
Well reasoned. I have not read the bill. Of course it is important to allow local and indigenous communities to have reasonable influence on permitting and siting that impacts them, perhaps even co-management. But I note that wind energy farms are now opposed by " groups funded by the fossil fuel industry that raise "environmental" objections. David Bidwell at U Rhode Island has done extensive excellent research on siting issues, especially offshore wind.
It would be a mistake if only fossil fuel production transportation permits were at stake. Smart environmentalists try to suppress demand for fossil fuels, not supply of fossil fuels.
This continues to be frustrating. I have had great respect and admiration for you since your days at the NYT, but not for McKibben. Not at all. Your informed and pragmatic approach is helpful. McKibben's a fundamentalist who has opposed fracking and natural gas for decades, the very replacements that are mostly responsible for the U.S.'s reduced emissions. That's decades of self-sabotage. Of course, I support passing the reform bill making it easier to build solar, transmission lines, and geothermal, and I hope nuclear, too. I disagree with your "rapidly warming planet" description, though less hyperbolic than the media's climate crisis meme narrative. We've warmed somewhat more than a degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age. The IPCC says that at least half of that is anthropogenic. At least a little of that man made warming is measurement, the urban heat island effect. I don't think there is any emergency, especially since the warming from carbon emissions is logarithmic. We have time to develop either dispatchable forms of green energy like geothermal or safer 4th generation nuclear power. After 50 years of promoting love of nature and her critters as a teacher and naturalist, I am very distressed that my environmentalism, like nature's own critters, are being crowded out. My environmentalism, and, I think, yours, are endangered by a climate fanaticism based on phony RCP8.5 projections, and by wind/solar marketing's false promises that they can replace dispatchable energy.
Forgive me for getting into the weeds, but I think it is worth talking about how the permitting reform bill moves all those projects from the queue to completion? For instance, EIA queue data on large-scale solar includes only those projects located on private property. As such, most solar, onshore wind, and battery storage falls under state and local jurisdiction. There are many exceptions to this, including interstate transmission lines, projects that received federal funds, projects located in places with endangered species, and of course projects on federal land, etc., but broadly speaking, federal policy's ability to substantively change barriers to local permitting processes is limited. As such, I would very much like to hear from folks who have been studying this policy, the exact mechanisms through which the permitting reform bill solves the suite of complex issues that lead to delay? Then we can weigh the benefits to fossil fuel with the likely benefits to renewable energy more accurately.
Among other points, the bill would speed up the judicial review timeline for all energy projects (clean or dirty, but most stuff being built now is clean), and mandate NEPA categorical exclusions across agencies for large categories of projects. In the modern U.S., NEPA applies to almost any possible energy projects as federal funding for the energy industry is so widespread, so this will have big impacts almost everywhere. This breakdown gives more detail if you're interested.
I would have supported the permitting reform bill even if exclusively made it easier for oil and gas leases. It will take another 10-15 years for Asia to get off Russian oil and gas. Ukraine can't handle 10 years of Russian aggression. Even if it means more emissions in the short run its worthwhile to get rid of authoritarian petrostates once and for all.
Can this be summarized as a debate/disagreement over how carbon emissions will accelerate or decelerate depending on whether the bill passes or not? Could the disagreement be settled with more robust projections of the resulting global energy/emissions mix upon passage of the bill? Right now I basically see two different opinions of how the energy landscape will evolve after passage of the bill, but not a ton of numbers showing concretely how global emissions will change.
Secondly, there seems to be a difference in opinion in how to weigh the cons of new fossil fuel development against the pros of new renewable development. A cursory reading of this article might lead one to believe the net (negative) value of new fossil fuel generation is equal to the net (positive) value of new renewable generation, and that because there will be a lot more renewable development than fossil fuel development, the results of this bill will be overwhelmingly positive. Bill may believe that those two values are not equal, and that the net negative of new fossil fuel generation is ~10x greater than the same amount of new renewable generation (as a net positive). I can understand that argument from a path to net zero perspective, as new renewable generation does not remove emissions produced by new fossil fuel generation. And it doesn't matter if the world has a billion GW of renewable generation, if there is still one GW of fossil fuel generation and associated emissions, the climate will still be warming without sufficient carbon removal.
I represent a third, perhaps irrelevant, position. I and some others oppose ALL energy development in the American arid lands. No fossil fuel extraction, no solar farms, no windmills, no uranium or lithium mining, no networks of access roads, no landscape scarring structures, no exploitation of nature for self centered human interests, be they pro or anti clean energy. Just stay out and keep out of our West, energy neo-colonialists!
Replying to myself: we should ask ourselves what is this fossil fuel vs. clean energy dispute really about? It is nothing but a domestic quarrel on how best for human civilization to proceed. What is the root cause of the current polycrises? Human civilization. We have to stop putting ourselves first. De-populate. Re-wild.
My heart is with you, but my intellect says that's not going to happen. The realistic alternative is help the third world advance to first world status. Affluent societies reduce their birth rate to replacement or below. That's the best realistic option. Of course, that means the third world needs a lot more energy, dispatchable energy, most likely fossil fuel energy. That's another McKibben self-sabotage example. Then, to your point- how do we reduce affluent populations' increasing consumption- cars, 2nd houses, and more and more stuff? That's the hard part. We need more people like you- a lot more!
Doug, yours is a welcome voice, and you sound as if your in your seventies as am I and that advanced age alone gives perspective although not necessarily wisdo (at least in my case). There is a hidden assumption in all this debate that our civilization is worth continuing by whatever realistic, pragmatic, achievable means we can ascertain. I dispute that. By genetic accident we are this planet's current apex species, but that gives us no moral high ground to decide which species should survive and which will not. We should not look for ways to force this planet to support 8 billion of us at whatever standard of living. 8 billion is 7 billion too many and that's a realistic conclusion as well.
I’m with you, Sam, on the new #permittingreform bill that “just say no” carbon hawks like Bill McKibben are fighting. On LNG exports, as you write, “renewables are winning the future globally. Developing Asian economies are building gigawatt-scale solar farms by the dozen, and adding a little more American LNG to the market in addition to the Qatari and Russian LNG already available isn’t going to stop that.” On the overall need for speed in USA energy system development, you are right again: “Permitting reform makes it a lot easier to build new stuff in general, and the overwhelming majority of the new stuff getting built in America these days is cleaner and better for the planet than the old stuff it’s replacing.”
Yes! Seems like pragmatism is feasible now. The bill will hand both sides of the energy equation opportunities to expand, but we’re on the winning side now, so the advantage for clean energy will be exponentially larger. As a news-weary Brit, this is the first time I’m hearing about this, but now I’m crossing my fingers for this as much as I would be as an American.
"The bill will hand both sides of the energy equation opportunities to expand, but we’re on the winning side now, so the advantage for clean energy will be exponentially larger."
You just brilliantly summed up my article in a sentence - thank you so much!
Great piece on the “Manchin-Barrasso permitting reform bill!" Grist called the bill a "devil's bargain" this morning, so your piece is really helpful in clarifying the data many in the movement need to see. I think another under-appreciated change in recent years is the capital discipline enacted at oil companies, shifting from drilling to paying dividends, so allowing for more oil projects doesn't for sure mean more projects we begin digging. I'm a big fan of CCL too, and given their non-partisan stance, I think we have to recognize that any bill passed without bipartisan support is not going to be long-term durable with congressional grid lock and constant shifts in power...
You nailed it. As McKibben himself has written, environmentalists need to learn how to say “yes” sometimes. This is a time for pragmatic progress, not for dogmatic stagnation. The energy revolution is already beating fossil fuel dinosaurs.
I agree with the article. I think a weakness in the argument, however, from the supply-side perspective, is that it does not address whether the benefits to fossil fuels in other sectors may outweigh the benefits to renewables in the electricity sector.
But I also think that supply-limiting strategies are overvalued by McKibben and many environmentalists. Limiting supply increases to match demand reductions would be great, but fossil demand reductions, including through building more renewable supply, are essential.
I see very little discussion of how the US dramatically reduced coal generation without ever (or hardly ever) directly opposing and shutting down any coal mines or coal trains. The reduction of coal supply was done through reducing the demand for coal for power plants by supporting energy efficiency and renewable energy development, and opposing coal plant construction and continued operation when renewables or natural gas alternatives were cheaper.
California has cut its use of natural gas for power production in half, not by closing pipelines or gas production, but by substituting renewable energy and batteries for gas generation. We can reduce the demand for gas further by continued expansion of EVs and heat pumps in the transportation and building sectors. Of course, energy efficiency can make a big difference in all these cases.
Without a great expansion of clean electricity and transmission, there is no way we can meet our climate goals. But we can still meet those goals even with some amount of new fossil supply production. Limiting fossil infrastructure could help by limiting surplus production and induced demand through price decreases. But it is not as essential as reducing fossil demand by greatly incresing our clean energy infrastructure.
Alan Nogee
I absolutely agree with your comment, Alan.
I appreciate your break-down of this bill and it's details. I definitely didn't know enough about it.
Personally what stirs my heart and mind is absent from this bill, as it is from most discussions about these topics, which is the subject of pushing for overall reduction of energy use, rather than trying to support current (and growing) levels of consumption though alternative means. I say this as a lover of wild places who opposes new sacrifice zones for new energy installations and for all the new or expanded mining needed to support it.
Thanks again for the good summary though!
Im not going to pretend to know enough about the details of the policy to make a strong argument. But I do anecdotally see even climate activists buying into the idea that non-renewables are able to put-compete renewables at a purely economic scale. It fulfills this narrative of climate activists as underdogs, fighting the good fight against profit-hungry oil companies. But right now, the momentum is in our direction. We are building more clean energy, and there is a growing demand for it. If renewables become accessible, desirable, and profitable, non-renewables lose their teeth.
I see a similar thing happening with big agriculture—more people going organic, regenerative, etc because it is actually more profitable than the alternative.
Well reasoned. I have not read the bill. Of course it is important to allow local and indigenous communities to have reasonable influence on permitting and siting that impacts them, perhaps even co-management. But I note that wind energy farms are now opposed by " groups funded by the fossil fuel industry that raise "environmental" objections. David Bidwell at U Rhode Island has done extensive excellent research on siting issues, especially offshore wind.
The excellent progressive climate and energy policy analyst Tyler Norris has posted a valuable thread on X identifying a critical element for renewables expansion that is NOT in the bill: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1819348487739228627.html#google_vignette
It would be a mistake if only fossil fuel production transportation permits were at stake. Smart environmentalists try to suppress demand for fossil fuels, not supply of fossil fuels.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/why-not-lng-exports
Andy,
This continues to be frustrating. I have had great respect and admiration for you since your days at the NYT, but not for McKibben. Not at all. Your informed and pragmatic approach is helpful. McKibben's a fundamentalist who has opposed fracking and natural gas for decades, the very replacements that are mostly responsible for the U.S.'s reduced emissions. That's decades of self-sabotage. Of course, I support passing the reform bill making it easier to build solar, transmission lines, and geothermal, and I hope nuclear, too. I disagree with your "rapidly warming planet" description, though less hyperbolic than the media's climate crisis meme narrative. We've warmed somewhat more than a degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial age. The IPCC says that at least half of that is anthropogenic. At least a little of that man made warming is measurement, the urban heat island effect. I don't think there is any emergency, especially since the warming from carbon emissions is logarithmic. We have time to develop either dispatchable forms of green energy like geothermal or safer 4th generation nuclear power. After 50 years of promoting love of nature and her critters as a teacher and naturalist, I am very distressed that my environmentalism, like nature's own critters, are being crowded out. My environmentalism, and, I think, yours, are endangered by a climate fanaticism based on phony RCP8.5 projections, and by wind/solar marketing's false promises that they can replace dispatchable energy.
Doug Allen
Forgive me for getting into the weeds, but I think it is worth talking about how the permitting reform bill moves all those projects from the queue to completion? For instance, EIA queue data on large-scale solar includes only those projects located on private property. As such, most solar, onshore wind, and battery storage falls under state and local jurisdiction. There are many exceptions to this, including interstate transmission lines, projects that received federal funds, projects located in places with endangered species, and of course projects on federal land, etc., but broadly speaking, federal policy's ability to substantively change barriers to local permitting processes is limited. As such, I would very much like to hear from folks who have been studying this policy, the exact mechanisms through which the permitting reform bill solves the suite of complex issues that lead to delay? Then we can weigh the benefits to fossil fuel with the likely benefits to renewable energy more accurately.
Among other points, the bill would speed up the judicial review timeline for all energy projects (clean or dirty, but most stuff being built now is clean), and mandate NEPA categorical exclusions across agencies for large categories of projects. In the modern U.S., NEPA applies to almost any possible energy projects as federal funding for the energy industry is so widespread, so this will have big impacts almost everywhere. This breakdown gives more detail if you're interested.
https://bipartisanpolicy.org/explainer/the-energy-permitting-reform-act-of-2024-whats-in-the-bill/
I would have supported the permitting reform bill even if exclusively made it easier for oil and gas leases. It will take another 10-15 years for Asia to get off Russian oil and gas. Ukraine can't handle 10 years of Russian aggression. Even if it means more emissions in the short run its worthwhile to get rid of authoritarian petrostates once and for all.
Thank you for writing this.
Can this be summarized as a debate/disagreement over how carbon emissions will accelerate or decelerate depending on whether the bill passes or not? Could the disagreement be settled with more robust projections of the resulting global energy/emissions mix upon passage of the bill? Right now I basically see two different opinions of how the energy landscape will evolve after passage of the bill, but not a ton of numbers showing concretely how global emissions will change.
Secondly, there seems to be a difference in opinion in how to weigh the cons of new fossil fuel development against the pros of new renewable development. A cursory reading of this article might lead one to believe the net (negative) value of new fossil fuel generation is equal to the net (positive) value of new renewable generation, and that because there will be a lot more renewable development than fossil fuel development, the results of this bill will be overwhelmingly positive. Bill may believe that those two values are not equal, and that the net negative of new fossil fuel generation is ~10x greater than the same amount of new renewable generation (as a net positive). I can understand that argument from a path to net zero perspective, as new renewable generation does not remove emissions produced by new fossil fuel generation. And it doesn't matter if the world has a billion GW of renewable generation, if there is still one GW of fossil fuel generation and associated emissions, the climate will still be warming without sufficient carbon removal.
I represent a third, perhaps irrelevant, position. I and some others oppose ALL energy development in the American arid lands. No fossil fuel extraction, no solar farms, no windmills, no uranium or lithium mining, no networks of access roads, no landscape scarring structures, no exploitation of nature for self centered human interests, be they pro or anti clean energy. Just stay out and keep out of our West, energy neo-colonialists!
Replying to myself: we should ask ourselves what is this fossil fuel vs. clean energy dispute really about? It is nothing but a domestic quarrel on how best for human civilization to proceed. What is the root cause of the current polycrises? Human civilization. We have to stop putting ourselves first. De-populate. Re-wild.
Michael,
My heart is with you, but my intellect says that's not going to happen. The realistic alternative is help the third world advance to first world status. Affluent societies reduce their birth rate to replacement or below. That's the best realistic option. Of course, that means the third world needs a lot more energy, dispatchable energy, most likely fossil fuel energy. That's another McKibben self-sabotage example. Then, to your point- how do we reduce affluent populations' increasing consumption- cars, 2nd houses, and more and more stuff? That's the hard part. We need more people like you- a lot more!
Doug, yours is a welcome voice, and you sound as if your in your seventies as am I and that advanced age alone gives perspective although not necessarily wisdo (at least in my case). There is a hidden assumption in all this debate that our civilization is worth continuing by whatever realistic, pragmatic, achievable means we can ascertain. I dispute that. By genetic accident we are this planet's current apex species, but that gives us no moral high ground to decide which species should survive and which will not. We should not look for ways to force this planet to support 8 billion of us at whatever standard of living. 8 billion is 7 billion too many and that's a realistic conclusion as well.