Following up on last week’s House of Representatives party-line passage of a debt-limit bill that included provisions to streamline the permitting process for major infrastructure projects, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has re-introduced his version of permit reform.
Construction groups such as the Associated General Contractors of America have long called for changes to the permit process to enable needed infrastructure projects—including renewable energy projects—to be built without becoming stymied by years of reviews and legal challenges. A recent study by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab found that only one in five transmission projects seeking to connect to the grid from 2000 to 2017 were operational by the end of 2022.