Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA) said at a Breitbart News policy event on Monday that energy permitting reform would be the “biggest thing” America could do to “stimulate our economy.”
“If you look at the energy demand that’s required, we cannot get the energy production in place quickly enough to meet the need. And, the big part of that is that our permitting process, whether it’s for an LNG [liquified natural gas], whether it’s for a pipeline, or whether it’s for a fracking site, or whether it’s for a nuclear facility, or whether it’s for just an update, upgrade on transmission lines, it takes years and years and years. And, what happened is that laws that were well-meaning like the Clean Water Act have been hijacked by environmental activists, not with a purpose of actually getting appropriate resolution of a particular project, but by hijacking the process, delaying, and ultimately canceling investment,” McCormick told Breitbart News Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle at the policy event.
McCormick added that if you are an investor, the worst thing is “uncertainty.”
He said that in Pennsylvania, the state had three projects that were killed because the companies could not get the permits. He said that, on average, a permit takes about five to six years. He noted that it took three and a half years to win World War II.
To combat the onerous permitting regulations, in April McCormick introduced the Unlock American Energy and Jobs Act, a bill that would streamline the federal permitting process and bring greater certainty to the approval of energy infrastructure projects.
A press release from McCormick’s office stated:
Today, more than 650 projects are currently listed on the federal Permitting Dashboard.
Construction costs run 24 to 30 percent higher when projects are held up. But the impact goes beyond delayed projects. According to an industry report, nearly 51 percent of manufacturers say permitting uncertainty discourages them from investing in new or expanded U.S. capacity, while nearly 66 percent say they would invest more if the process were faster and more predictable. The permitting system is not just slowing projects down, it is preventing a significant share of investment from being proposed in the first place.
“This is unnatural, this is not what the legislators envisioned when they passed these laws and they have been contorted this way that is not consistent with America’s interests,” McCormick remarked.
He said that the review process should be limited to one year and that once a decision is made it cannot be revoked.
McCormick said there is $1.5 trillion of capital that is stranded waiting to be invested because of permitting rules.
He said that permitting reform would “unlock” all of this capital and be the “biggest thing” America can do to “stimulate our economy.”
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