The Trump administration’s all-in push on permitting reform is running up against its anti-renewable energy agenda.
That’s the conclusion the National Petroleum Council reached in a new report commissioned by President Donald Trump’s Department of Energy.
The council, a federal advisory committee, found that the Trump administration can’t advance oil and gas infrastructure without pulling back some of its legal attacks on renewable energy.
The council’s recommendations also highlight how some of Trump’s own allies in the federal government are critical of the administration’s strategy to dismantle offshore wind and other renewable projects through the courts.
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Legal challenges to infrastructure that halt or slow progress on projects can lead to “unmet energy demand, reduced energy reliability, weakened energy security, and prolonged reliance on older, less efficient, and potentially higher-emitting energy assets,” the report said.
The advisory committee is made up largely of oil and gas industry players aligned with the Trump administration’s energy agenda. But their acknowledgement that administration’s legal challenges against major renewable energy projects are a barrier to permitting reform could also give a boost to the offshore wind developers attempting to resist the administration’s legal attacks.
“They understand that societally, when there’s a different president, which someday there will be, that president may have different inclinations,” Kris Ohleth, the director of the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind, told NOTUS last month of the oil and gas industry recognizing the contradictions within Trump’s energy agenda.
Trump’s Interior Department has repeatedly claimed that renewable energy permits granted under previous administrations should be revoked because they didn’t involve thorough reviews. They’ve invoked the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, a statute that requires federal agencies to conduct a procedural review of most major agency actions, and other environmental laws to do this.
In at least one case, their technique has succeeded. But the report indicates that this tactic could have adverse effects on the administration’s other priorities.
“Some project opponents deploy expansive readings of NEPA as a litigation strategy to block or delay infrastructure development, frustrating national energy and infrastructure priorities,” the National Petroleum Council report said.
The council recommended that Congress add language to NEPA that would significantly limit legal challenges to existing projects. The proposed reforms include language that would bar courts from vacating existing permits, which could throw a wrench in Trump’s plan to undo offshore wind projects approved under the Biden administration.
The National Petroleum Council’s recommendations also undermined some other Trump administration energy moves, including a swath of energy funding cancellations this year that hit multiple transmission and grid reliability projects. The report doubled down on the importance of boosting those types of projects.
“Ensuring adequate generation, transmission, interconnections, and fuel supply is essential to sustaining U.S. economic leadership, maintaining system reliability, and supporting emerging industrial and digital loads,” the report read.
The report comes as House lawmakers are set to vote next week on the SPEED Act, a bipartisan permitting reform bill that would change the language of NEPA to trim the scope and amount of necessary environmental reviews that federal agencies have to carry out.
The bill has been touted as a vehicle for conservative energy priorities. But its language would give renewable energy developers some reprieve if it passes.
Widespread bipartisan support that pushed the legislation out of committee could be a sign that support in Congress for permitting reform includes support for renewable energy, even among lawmakers otherwise allied with Trump. Democratic Rep. Jared Golden submitted an amendment to the bill that would block the executive branch from revoking already-issued permits, and it saw unanimous support from committee members on both sides of the aisle.
When the Trump administration began its attempts to take down offshore wind, energy experts predicted that the president would soon have to contend with the implications of trying to dismantle existing renewable energy leases.
“What they’re doing is basically the equivalent of throwing spaghetti against the wall and seeing what sticks,” said Liz Klein, the former director of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management under the Biden administration, of the Trump administration’s legal strategy.
But what sticks has had unintended consequences, Robin Kundis Craig, a professor at the University of Kansas Law School and an expert on offshore wind and water rights, told NOTUS earlier this year.
It’s “fairly difficult politically for the administration to make that argument, given that they want to promote oil and gas, and trying to establish a rule that makes these leases revocable at will is not going to induce people to invest enough for oil and gas development,” Craig said.
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