Environmental trade-offs
By Leslie Kaufman and Zahra Hirji
When Senate negotiators unveiled a sweeping permitting reform deal last week, clean-energy advocates welcomed provisions intended to speed construction of renewable energy and long-distance power lines.
Now, however, many environmental groups are pushing back over what could be sacrificed to get those projects built — and questioning whether the bipartisan deal would deliver enough clean energy in return.
Read More: What the Senate Permitting Deal Means for US Climate Emissions
The debate is still in early stages. A Senate vote isn’t expected until after the midterm elections, when the political landscape could look very different, and the 417-page bill could change substantially along the way. But the initial reactions are beginning to reveal some of the biggest fault lines.
Environmental groups have raised concerns that fall broadly into three areas: changes to the Endangered Species Act, rollbacks to Clean Water Act protections and, more fundamentally, whether longstanding safeguards for nature would be lost without securing enough renewable energy in return.
Tidal wetlands near Newark, California. Photographer: Sam Hall/Bloomberg
The Sierra Club cautioned that the deal could also end up boosting fossil-fuel projects more than renewables. “There is no task more urgent than building clean energy and transmission,” the nonprofit’s Chief Program Officer Holly Bender said in a statement. But the legislation “cannot guarantee that more wind and solar projects will actually get built” while the Trump administration continues to block projects, she warned, and other provisions would provide immediate benefits to oil and gas companies.
On Tuesday, more than 200 organizations, including the Center for Biological Diversity and Friends of the Earth, sent a letter to Senate Democratic leaders opposing provisions they say would weaken the Endangered Species Act, one of the country’s foundational conservation laws. Among other changes, the draft bill would alter the “best available science” standard agencies use when deciding whether to list species as endangered and whether federal actions could affect them once listed. It would also allow states to take over some consultations currently handled by federal wildlife agencies.