I’ll be speaking this Thursday at After the Ballots: What the 2026 Election Means for American Clean Energy, hosted by ACORE in NYC. I'll join a stacked lineup to unpack what the results mean for investors, developers, and innovators. Details below.
Robin Millican
@RobinMillican
Energy, deep tech, and geopolitics at Center on Global Energy Policy @ColumbiaUEnergy | Former Breakthrough Energy policy and strategy leader | Views my own
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The revised BAAJA bill includes several very important changes that would avoid unintended outcomes in the permit certainty title that we at @ColumbiaUEnergy mentioned in our analysis. It's a good bill, now made stronger & hopefully we'll see it move forward.
New @ColumbiaUEnergy dashboard just out by @AndreasenJack showing how BAAJA's permitting provisions may alter project timelines for onshore/offshore wind, solar, geothermal, pipelines, and transmission.
It estimates, for example, transmission lines could take 8 fewer years. 1/
It estimates, for example, transmission lines could take 8 fewer years. 1/
Impressive names from across the aisle & administrations, arguing that permitting reform is needed for national and economic security.
Included in here: a reminder that NEPA was waived for semiconductor fabs etc getting govt support, because Congress felt speed was important.
Included in here: a reminder that NEPA was waived for semiconductor fabs etc getting govt support, because Congress felt speed was important.
NEWS: 19 FORMER ECONOMIC AND NATIONAL SECURITY LEADERS ENDORSE THE BIPARTISAN PERMITTING REFORM BILL
Today, a group of former Cabinet members and White House principals across seven Democratic and Republican administrations sent a letter calling on Congress to pass BAAJA. Here are the signatories:
Janet YELLEN, Michael R. POMPEO, Steven T. MNUCHIN, Leon E. PANETTA, Timothy F. GEITHNER, Henry M. PAULSON, Jr., Robert E. RUBIN, Stephen MIRAN, Jared BERNSTEIN, Tyler GOODSPEED, Jason FURMAN, Glenn HUBBARD, Laura D’Andrea TYSON, Michael J. BOSKIN, Jeffrey ZIENTS, Jake SULLIVAN, Brian DEESE, Larry KUDLOW, Allan B. HUBBARD
Key highlights from the letter:
1. “We are not building infrastructure fast enough to remain globally competitive… The median time for a new power plant to move from an interconnection request to commercial operation has more than doubled, from less than two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007 to more than four years for projects built between 2018 and 2024.
2. China has built more high-voltage transmission in the last fifteen years than the U.S. has built in all of its history... In 2024, China accounted for 31.5% of global knowledge- and technology-intensive manufacturing value added, compared with 20.7% for the United States.
3. Federally funded or permitted projects require NEPA review, but private projects often do not, creating a threat of failure precisely where the government is trying to be proactive, strategic, and engaged.
4. A project that spends years awaiting approval must continue carrying development and financing costs while remaining exposed to rising input costs. The IEA reports that prices for utility-scale transformers increased 26% in 2024, while lead times for some transformers have stretched as long as six years.
5. Mining projects also face tremendous uncertainty: a 2026 study by researchers at the Colorado School of Mines found that permitting for modern mining projects takes an average of 5.5 years, rising to 8.9 years for contested projects. The U.S. currently has the second-longest mine development timeline in the world.
6. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is the most significant bipartisan legislative effort that Congress has undertaken in decades to tackle these challenges.
7. BAAJA addresses key constraints stifling American industry by requiring interregional transmission planning, strengthening the federal backstop for nationally significant transmission lines, and creating a faster, more predictable process for connecting new generation to the grid.
8. BAAJA also makes permits more durable by imposing tighter timelines for litigation and limiting frivolous lawsuits that can halt projects indefinitely, while preserving community input and judicial review of substantive agency decisions.”
The letter was organized by @arnabdatta321 on behalf of @IFP and covered exclusively by the WSJ this morning.View quoted post on X
I agree with this first principles assessment from Jane about where we expect marginal gains to accrue from broad based permitting reform. We have gotten very good at extracting and using hydrocarbons already. Larger barriers remain for clean sources.
I think where I’m disagreeing with people is that even if you don’t trust the emissions modeling (join le club), first principles suggest that it is more likely to generate clean lock-in than fossil lock-in, *certainly* relative to a counterfactual where the bill doesn’t passView quoted post on X
