Earthjustice Action Statement on Senate Permitting Bill

Contact: Siham Zniber, szniber@earthjustice.org

Washington, D.C. – Earthjustice Action President Abigail Dillen issued the following statement in response to the permitting bill released by the Senate:  

“This bill marks a genuine policy breakthrough on transmission and modernization of our electric grid, and we are committed to advancing these correct and ambitious reforms to enable an affordable clean energy future and address climate change.  

But this bill in its current form asks too high a price for progress that is in no way guaranteed, and that will not happen without a President who champions clean energy. Even more sweepingly, this bill makes extremely consequential trade-offs that don’t bear significantly on energy permitting, much less clean energy deployment. 

Right now, we are seeing a massive gas build-out, especially as gas has become the favored resource to power AI data centers. This bill would further incentivize and entrench dependence on gas at the expense of cheaper, cleaner resources. And it would leave communities, including Tribes, facing more polluting infrastructure with less influence over decisions that bear very directly on their health, livelihoods, and future.  

It eviscerates bedrock protections for Tribal sovereignty, water, wetlands, endangered species, and the most basic expectations for transparency and responsible environmental analysis.  And it does all of this in the most anti-environmental administration in modern history.  

This is not the time to take down the guardrails and unleash this President’s plans to drill, mine, log, sell, and give away whatever serves private as opposed to public interests, no matter what the consequences may be. 

By limiting meaningful review and effective court remedies, the bill would restrict access to the courts at the very moment when courts are the most important—and sometimes the only—check on government corruption and abuse. 

We recognize that durable progress requires compromise, and we are eager to work with members of Congress to build on the strengths of this bill’s landmark grid provisions. But a deal that fast-tracks more gas, closes courthouse doors, and dismantles our laws to further embolden a lawless administration is not a compromise we can afford now.”