Key Republican releases draft permitting bill as bipartisan talks continue

A key House Republican negotiator has released a draft bill aimed at speeding up approvals for the nation’s energy projects as bipartisan and bicameral talks continue. 

House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman (Ark.) released legislation aimed at speeding up environmental reviews and limiting legal challenges under the nation’s bedrock environmental law. 

The draft comes as Westerman and Rep. Scott Peters (D-Calif.) have been negotiating the issue, known as permitting reform, in the House. On the Senate side, Sens. Joe Manchin (I-W.Va.) and John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) announced a bipartisan compromise earlier this year.

While Peters and Westerman have been negotiating a joint bill, Peters’s spokesperson said those talks are still ongoing and confirmed that the newly public draft is from Westerman only. 

A Westerman spokesperson described the draft as a starting point in bicameral talks. 

The proposed legislation would limit the use of new science in environmental reviews, as part of an effort to prevent research from stalling a project’s approval. 

Like the Manchin-Barrasso bill, the Westerman draft would also limit how long opponents of a project have to sue. 

Westerman’s bill also restricts courts’ ability to block projects just because of insufficient environmental analysis and would only allow them to do so over actual environmental harm. 

It would also limit the definition of environmental impacts that are “reasonably foreseeable” as a result of a project and therefore subject to review. 

Critics of this approach have noted that limited definitions could result in the exclusion of climate impacts that occur downstream — if for example a review pertains to fossil fuel production or transport while the bulk of the fuel’s emissions occur later than when the fuel is actually burned. 

Westerman’s draft will be discussed at a House Natural Resources Committee hearing next week.