OPINION:
On Tuesday, Tom Steyer endorsed permitting reform. If that does not give you pause, I have no idea what would.
Mr. Steyer, for those of you who may have forgotten, is a California billionaire who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination way back in 2020, mostly on the idea that the U.S. was too prosperous and that the government needed to make energy much more expensive. He advanced this argument as an effort nominally directed at solving, fixing or preventing climate change.
Give him credit for consistency. Before running for office, he spent years funding various parts of the climate change cause, industry or racket. He has changed direction a bit. The real problem, he now says, is that it takes too long for us to build energy infrastructure such as pipelines and coal-fired power plants.
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Just kidding. Like all other Democrats who favor permitting reform legislation, he does not care about the modest giveaways on the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act. He cares about ensuring that the federal government controls how we pay for transmission lines in this country. He made that clear in his endorsement that the legislation is the “best chance … to build clean energy at scale.”
We should all appreciate the honesty. Whatever else he might be, Mr. Steyer is not wrong.
Federal control of the electricity grid — which the legislation will lead to — will mean more wind projects are connected, and their costs are paid for by pretty much all ratepayers, whether they think the projects are worthwhile or not.
It will probably not shock you to learn that this plan was originally conceived by the Obama team and formalized in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s Order 1000 in 2015. The Biden team tried its best to expand those efforts in FERC’s Order 1920 in 2024.
The legislation before us now would codify and advance those orders from the Obama and Biden administrations. That is why people such as Mr. Steyer and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island Democrat, are in favor of it. They do not care about the proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act; their friends in the legal community still have plenty of litigation opportunities in the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act.
The National Environmental Policy Act is superannuated and has been supplanted by other statutes.
The Democrats care only about the transmission title, and with good reason. It is potentially worth billions of dollars in transmission projects that will primarily benefit wind power and be paid for mostly by unsuspecting ratepayers. The legislation is designed specifically to give the federal government control over the utility industry.
If there is doubt about that, look at Section 2104 of the proposed transmission title. It reads as follows: “Not later than 1 year after the date of enactment of this section, the Commission shall by rule establish procedures by which 1 or more states may refer a public utility to the Commission for an investigation into the processes used by the public utility for planning and developing local transmission facilities.” That is as clear a path to nationalization of the utility industry as one could write into law. It essentially gives the federal government limitless ability to second-guess utility decisions, large and small.
Is that what the voters want? Is there some wave of voter demand to have our current government — which cannot win wars, balance budgets, manage the economy, educate the populace or root out corruption — run the most complicated machine ever constructed?
Everyone wants permitting to be better. This legislation is a modest nod in that direction. Were it serious, we would be talking about repealing the National Environmental Policy Act, making material amendments to the Clean Air Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act — perhaps something as simple as a definition of navigable waters — and creating a single federal agency in charge of permitting.
What we are talking about instead — because it is the true purpose of the legislation — is the de facto handing over of control of the transmission system to the federal government. This is why guys such as Mr. Steyer support the legislation.
The support of Republicans in the U.S. Senate, however, is much more difficult to comprehend.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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