It’s been two weeks since a bipartisan team of senators unveiled a proposal to reshape the future of energy and infrastructure projects in America — and some of the biggest environmental groups still haven’t come out with a full-throated position on it.
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act — the ambitious proposal from Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia) and Martin Heinrich (D-New Mexico) — pits two core tenets of the environmental movement against one another: the urgency for a clean energy transition and the decades-long fight for stronger federal protections for air, water, animals and nature.
That tension has created a minefield for large environmental groups and their allies on the left.
Major green groups — the League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Natural Resources Defense Council — have hedged. They’ve shown modest support for certain provisions, brought up concerns about others and largely strayed away from endorsement or opposition.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), longtime adversaries of the fossil fuel industry and proponents of a “Green New Deal,” have not made any statements about their positions. Ocasio-Cortez’s office said it had nothing to share, while Sanders’s office did not respond to The Washington Sun’s request for comment.
A lobbyist familiar with where environmental organizations stand called the permitting reform bill a “Sophie’s Choice” for the major green groups.
“They’re legitimately struggling,” they said. “Imagine you’re an environmental group, and you have a climate team and an environment side. And the environment side includes environmental justice and clean air and clean water — how do you balance that?”
The past two years have created a unique moment for infrastructure and energy policy. Energy got more expensive. President Donald Trump sharply halted federal investments in clean energy and climate projects. Democrats have “hushed” their climate rhetoric just as a new crop of bipartisan groups, spurred by the “abundance” movement, amplified calls to ease regulations and build big. Meanwhile, the backlash to data center development catalyzed support around local water and land protections and cast blame on AI infrastructure for increasing electricity costs.
These conditions have scrambled political alliances around Congress’ newest permitting reform bill — a sweeping, 400-page document that includes changes to environmental laws that haven’t been touched by Congress in years and provisions that could accelerate the build-out of transmission and clean energy, as well as fossil fuel infrastructure.
“What this bill evidences is a contested fight over different theories of change,” said Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, the executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center, which opposes the bill.
The debate, he said, boils down to whether you believe that the arc of capitalism will bend toward renewable energy.
“Down one path, what this bill reflects is, ‘Let the market rip, let tech, energy and finance capital rip, and then through the magic wand of the market this will lead to decarbonization and robust energy supply,’” he said. “We think that’s problematic because it essentially cedes control over our energy future to capital and takes that power away from the public.”
Environmental groups, including Food and Water Watch, the Center for Biological Diversity and Bill McKibben’s Third Act, are organizing efforts to block the bill over concerns about the loss of environmental protections and benefits to the fossil fuel industry. On Tuesday, a group of 185 organizations sent a letter to House Democratic leadership calling the legislation a backdoor deal and a “massive power grab by Big Tech and the fossil fuel industry.”
On the other side, there’s an unsteady coalition of climate hawks, clean energy groups, AI infrastructure associations and fossil fuel companies who see a new path forward for the kinds of massive projects long stalled by red tape.
Citizens’ Climate Lobby endorsed the bill, saying it would make “remarkable, rapid progress” toward reducing emissions and addressing climate change. The Solar Energy Industries Association said it was “exactly the kind of bipartisan action America needs.” Incompas, an AI infrastructure association, said the bill could “accelerate the energy and infrastructure projects needed to support America’s AI future.” And the American Petroleum Institute called the bill a “generational opportunity.”
Clean energy groups are highlighting the bill’s potential to reduce emissions. Modeling from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions suggests transmission and interconnection reforms alone could lead to deep reductions in climate-warming pollution, though there isn’t yet a comprehensive report on the net impact of the bill as a whole.
Major environmental groups seem to largely be dealing with these tensions by slow-walking their responses. In several statements, groups say that the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is too long to quickly formulate a response.
“This is significant and complex legislation and we will be taking the time to analyze and understand its full impacts,” Sara Chieffo, the senior vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement.
In a blog post last week, the Sierra Club’s chief program officer, Holly Bender, made the climate case for a version of permitting reform but stopped short of endorsing the bipartisan compromise.
“America’s energy demands are higher than ever and it’s never been more critical that we build as much clean energy as possible, as quickly as possible,” she wrote, adding that supporting clean energy infrastructure is work that “literally saves lives.”
Bender noted some “green flags” in the bill: requirements for regional grid operators to work together on transmission planning; a federal “backstop” that would allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve transmission lines if states drag out their processes beyond one year; and protections against power-hungry data centers spiking electric costs.
But her “red flags” — limiting courts’ powers to stop projects, weakening Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act protections, permitting certain provisions that could “lock-in” fossil fuel projects — outnumbered the green ones.
Add to that the Trump administration has targeted precisely the energy projects the Sierra Club wants to see succeed, and the bill as written becomes a hard sell.
Still, the organization’s response is a marked departure from its critique of permitting reform efforts from two years ago, which it dubbed a “dirty deal.”
This time, Bender wrote, “the stakes couldn’t be higher.”
“If Congress fails to get this right, it could mean continued reliance on fossil fuels, higher costs for families, and ever-worsening extreme weather events,” she wrote.
Other major green groups have taken similar middle-of-the-road stances.
The Natural Resources Defense Council called permitting reform a “necessity” but said it was still trying to understand the trade-offs — major changes to the Clean Water Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act that could accelerate fossil fuel development.
Kameran Onley, a managing director at The Nature Conservancy, said in a statement that the organization believes modernizing permitting can hold both: moving faster to build infrastructure and protecting people and nature.
“While we are still analyzing the many details of the bill, we see some promising improvements and hard compromises,” she said, adding that the organization would advocate for community and conservation interests as the legislative process moves forward.
Onley also said the group would advocate for tribal sovereignty in the process. Provisions that would limit the National Historic Preservation Act have emerged as a major issue for tribal preservation leaders. The National Association of Tribal Historic Preservation Officers has opposed the permitting bill, saying it would cut tribes out of the planning process for federal projects.
Valerie Grussing, the executive director for legislative affairs and strategic partnerships at the association, said in a statement that the bill was a “legislative assault on the sovereignty of Tribal Nations” and would be a violation of the federal government’s treaty responsibilities if enacted.
A major critique that has emerged is how the bill was written behind closed doors in negotiations among Senate leaders. The Trump administration’s interference with renewable energy projects threatened to kill the deal several times.
The senators responsible for the deal may be hesitant to accept too many changes. But Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) told The Sun he would work on amendments that are important to tribal preservation offices, as well as “relatively technical” amendments that conservation groups have pushed for.
“But, you know, it’s a planetary emergency,” he said on The Washington Sun Cast. “I’m, generally speaking, hawkish on taking big steps in the direction of clean energy, even if it’s a mixed bag.”
Todd Tucker, the industrial policy and trade director at the Roosevelt Institute, said he anticipates that green groups taking a middle road on the bill will ultimately help the permitting reform deal move forward.
“I think there’s a big difference here between opposing and staying neutral,” he said. “I think most of the larger groups are going to stay neutral or somewhat positive. And I think that is likely to give this bill the support that it needs,” he said.
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