Senate Republican: ‘Grand bargain’ needed for energy permitting reform

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said a bipartisan “grand bargain” would likely be necessary for energy permitting reform at an energy industry conference Wednesday morning.

“I actually think that permitting reform can only happen as part of a grand bargain,” Cassidy said during a panel discussion with Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) at the American Petroleum Institute’s State of American Energy event. 

He brought up proposals he believed Republicans could support, such as one his office has put forth to impose a “foreign polluters’ fee” on higher carbon-intensity imports from countries such as China.

“If somebody’s polluting, that’s an externality, that’s not embedded in the price of a good,” Cassidy said. “You put a tax on that to account for the externality. We should be doing that on products from China. It’s the only thing that’s going to get them to change.” 

“If the right could acknowledge there is this externality of increased carbon intensity and carbon emissions from goods produced in China, for example, and that we’re going to put a fee to account for that externality, maybe the left would say, ‘OK, you’re doing this, we will accept in turn, judicial review for permitting,’” Cassidy continued.

He expressed doubt that any such breakthrough would occur in the next year, alluding to “the silliness season” that will surround the presidential election, but added, “We have to set the stage by socializing the concepts now so that after the next presidential election, we can actually come together on this.”

Hickenlooper expressed agreement with Cassidy’s call for a “grand bargain,” adding that another key factor in such a bargain would be improved measurements of exact amounts of pollutants, including “fugitive emissions” that unintentionally leak during industrial and energy production activities.

“Once we measure it I think we can get everybody on the same page,” the Colorado Democrat said.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has also been one of the Senate’s most vocal supporters of permitting reform, and agreed to back the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 in exchange for a promise from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to introduce permitting reform legislation. While a broader bill has yet to make it through Congress, the deal last summer to raise the federal debt limit included shorter timelines for environmental reviews.