The progressive take on the permitting debate

In this episode, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project shares a progressive vision for permitting reform and the factors that could speed up the US clean-energy buildout.

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Text transcript:

David Roberts

To achieve its Paris climate targets, the US is going to have to build out an enormous amount of clean energy and clean-energy infrastructure in coming years. But that buildout is going slowly — painfully, excruciatingly slowly — relative to the pace that is necessary.

This has given rise to considerable debate on the left over what, exactly, is slowing things down. Much of that debate has come to focus on permitting, and more specifically, on permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.

A deal that would have put some restrictions on NEPA in exchange for reforms to transmission planning was effectively killed by progressives toward the end of the last congressional session, leading many people inside and outside the climate movement to accuse progressives of being The Problem. They are so attached to slowing down fossil fuel development with NEPA, the accusation goes, that they are willing to live with it slowing clean energy. And that’s a bad trade.

Progressives, not surprisingly, disagree! Their take on the whole permitting debate is summarized in a new paper from the Roosevelt Institute and the Climate and Community Project: “A Progressive Vision for Permitting Reform.”

The title is slightly misleading, since one of the central points of the paper is that permitting under NEPA is only a small piece of the puzzle — there are many other factors that play a role in slowing clean energy, and many other reforms that could do more to speed it up. I called up one of the paper’s co-authors, Johanna Bozuwa of the Climate and Community Project, to ask her about those other reforms, the larger political debate, and the progressive community’s take on speed.

All right, then. With no further ado, Johanna Bozuwa from the Climate and Community Project. Welcome to Volts, and thank you so much for coming.

Johanna Bozuwa

Thank you so much for having me, David.

David Roberts

This is a hot topic, as you're well aware, permitting and the larger issues around it. And so, before we jump into specifics, I wanted to start with a few sort of broad, call them philosophical, questions.

Johanna Bozuwa

Perfect.

David Roberts

As you know, progressives have been under quite a bit of fire lately, not only from their typical opponents on the right and in the fossil fuel industry, but from a lot of sort of centrists and even a lot of sort of allies in the climate movement. For — I think the general idea is they are too attached to stopping fossil fuels and not yet supportive enough of building out renewable energy. And the mechanisms that they rely on to slow and stop fossil fuels are also slowing and stopping renewable energy. And so I think the general critique is that they ought to swing around and be more pro-building and loosen these requirements, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure you've heard all this.

Johanna Bozuwa

Yes.

David Roberts

So I guess I'd just start with this question. Is, do you think the progressive — and by the way, I meant to say this by way of a caveat, I'm going to be sort of using you as a spokesperson for progressivism, which I think we both realize is ridiculous.

Johanna Bozuwa

Right, exactly.

David Roberts

Progressives are heterogeneous just like anybody else. There's no official progressive position. But as a crude, let's just say as a crude instrument here, we're going to ask you to speak for that perspective as you see it.

Johanna Bozuwa

Perfect.

David Roberts

So in your opinion, do you think progressives have taken it into their heart that things are moving too slowly and they desperately need to move faster?

Johanna Bozuwa

My answer to that question is that I think speed is progressive. You know, David, I don't need to tell this to you or any of the people that listen to this podcast or even progressives. We're dealing with the existential threat of the climate crisis and lives are on the line. And so I think that as progressives, we do need to take the speed question seriously. And I think what I would push back on is the fact that people have this myopic focus on permitting as the thing that's slowing everything down. And especially when I'm talking about permitting, NEPA permitting.

David Roberts

Right. We're going to definitely get to that.

Johanna Bozuwa

Yeah. And I just think that when it comes to this question of "Do progressives believe in speed?" I think that they actually very much do. And one of the things that I get frustrated with sometimes, when I hear these arguments like "Oh, progressives don't want to build anything," I think what progressives are interested in is building the right thing. And if we think about the United States and how our energy system rolls out today, we have a real issue that fossil fuels can expand at the same time as renewable energy is expanding. Like when it comes to fossil fuels, we can actually export that.

We are now the biggest net exporter of LNG and crude oil. And I think that progressives are particularly aware that if we do the wrong thing on permitting then we're actually not only expanding renewable energy — and maybe poorly done renewable energy — but also the fossil fuel industry knows how to use these tools so much better than our renewable energy developers. And we are going to see just a massive expansion that we absolutely don't need right now. If we think the climate crisis matters.

David Roberts

What about the argument which goes like this: Fossil fuels are reaching sort of a structural peak and decline. Renewable energy is getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. It's on the rise. So if you just, all things being equal, make it easier to build everything across the board, renewable energy will win that race and so it's worth doing.

Johanna Bozuwa

I just don't think that argument is true, look at how much power the fossil fuel industry still has in making these decisions. Like if we look at who is behind the recent push for permitting reform: It was largely the oil and gas industry. There's definitely some more nuance that's there, but they have significant power to move things and move them faster than the clean energy world. It's a question of when you're rolling back some of these bedrock environmental laws that the pie — it's not that the part of renewable energy in the pie is getting bigger. It's that even if we are getting more renewable energy, the pie itself has expanded so that we're having fossil fuels and renewables expanding at the same time.

And it's not fully pushing out the power of the fossil fuel industry.

David Roberts

Well, then, how about this? And this is the final philosophical question before we get down to some nuts and bolts. Do you agree that there are going to be trade-offs a