Compromise on Permitting Reform Is a Win for Clean Energy

It’s a decent rule of thumb: Where Congress is concerned, boringness and progress often go hand in hand. After two years of talks, Senators Joe Manchin and John Barrasso struck a bipartisan bargain last week intended to ease permitting rules for energy projects. It’s detailed, dull and potentially momentous.

Even as billions of dollars have flowed into the green transition in recent years, red tape still makes it difficult to build the necessary infrastructure. Impact statements required by the National Environmental Policy Act, for instance, routinely extend for thousands of pages, take years to complete and cost millions of dollars. Often-spurious legal challenges compound the problem. Perversely, multiple analyses suggest that clean-energy projects are disproportionately affected by such rules.

Building on reforms in last year’s debt-ceiling deal, the new bill confronts this morass. It includes measures to make permitting more consistent and less costly. It streamlines reviews, application approvals, leasing decisions and other administrative burdens for energy projects on federal land…