Red Tape Podcast, Episode 2 – It Ain’t Easy Being Green
Red Tape is the newest R Street podcast about the country’s biggest problems and the surprising ways that governments (and regular people) often get in the way of solving them. It was produced in partnership with Pod People. Listen wherever you find podcasts, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify, and learn more about the podcast here.
Episode description:
Why is the government getting in the way of green energy initiatives? Join hosts Kelli Pierce and Shoshana Weissmann as they navigate some of the red tape that is slowing down clean energy projects.
R Street’s Josiah Neeley speaks with host Kelli Pierce about the crucial role of our nation’s power grid in our pursuit of green energy goals. He talks about how wind and solar have become the cheaper options, why utilities are monopolies, the challenges this creates for our clean energy future, and finally why there aren’t more clean energy projects connected to the grid.
Next up, R Street’s Philip Rossetti shares his thoughts on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and how it can delay clean energy projects by years-even decades. He also talks about the hard choices we have to make as we pursue a greener future.
Episode breakdown:
(0:00:00) – Bureaucracy or BS
(0:05:42) – Power Grid and Clean Energy Goals with Josiah Neeley
(0:20:22) – NEPA’s Impact on Clean Energy with Philip Rossetti
Episode transcript:
*Cold Open*
Kelli Pierce, Host:
Shoshana, now that we’re hosting this show together, let’s play a little game.
Shoshana Weismann, Co-Host:
Oh gosh.
Kelli:
I call it bureaucracy or BS. I give you a regulation or story and you tell me if it’s a true bureaucratic rule or BS.
Shoshana:
I mean, it’s impossible to know the difference.
Kelli:
I think you’re going to do pretty great on this. You ready?
Shoshana:
Yeah.
Kelli:
All right. First one, bureaucracy or BS. Tons of food was thrown into landfills early in the pandemic, in part because of a labeling regulation.
Shoshana:
That feels true. I got to think that’s true.
*Ding SFX*
Kelli:
That’s right. It is bureaucracy. Restaurants couldn’t sell food directly to the public at the beginning of the pandemic because that food did not have nutrition facts labels.
Shoshana:
I remember that, when restaurants weren’t able to just give people their freaking food.
Kelli:
I know. Like you don’t know what’s in a steak.
Shoshana:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Or like a vegetable.
Kelli:
All right. Second one. Bureaucracy or BS. It’s difficult to take down dead trees in federal forests because different agencies and departments have a say in the decision.
Shoshana:
Oh, man, that feels like… I wonder if you’re going to say it’s BS, but I think it’s bureaucracy.
*Ding SFX*
Kelli:
It is bureaucracy. My buddy works in the forest service and she says there can be multiple agencies or departments that need to approve taking down dead trees. And some of the reasons include things like whether taking down the dead tree would have an effect on wildlife habitats or the watershed.
Shoshana:
And I’m kind of sympathetic to some of that stuff. I still think maybe we could streamline it.
Kelli:
There are hundreds of millions of dead trees in the west because of the big drought out there. So I think the bigger problem for the habitat is if it goes up in flames.
Shoshana:
Yeah, yeah. There has to be more control there.
Kelli:
Okay. Last one. Bureaucracy or BS. Work on a light rail line in Maryland was delayed when an environmental group and a handful of other citizens sued, saying the project threatened a habitat for endangered crustaceans even though the habitat did not exist on the project site.
Shoshana:
Ooh. I’m going to say BS just because I feel like they can’t all be bureaucracy.
*Buzzer SFX*
Kelli:
This one’s actually bureaucracy. So a decade ago there was a lawsuit that claimed the light rail project would endanger a couple of shrimp-like species, but the US Fish and Wildlife Service told the judge that their habitats were actually far away and the whole area was already zoned for commercial uses. So it’s one of the reasons that light rail line, you probably won’t be able to use it for another few years.
Shoshana:
Oh, that’s good. That’s good. Just hold off infrastructure use and building as much as we can.
Kelli:
I mean, I have to compliment you on your score. You did really, really well in this game. You really know your bureaucracy from your BS.
Shoshana:
I’m trying not to err on the side of bureaucracy all the time.
Kelli:
I mean, you’ve really been writing and speaking about this stuff for years, but I think some of these examples go to show that bureaucracy isn’t just bureaucrats. We get in our own way all the time, and bureaucracy is a significant reason. We don’t have something we all want and need: clean energy.
*Theme Music In*
Shoshana:
I’m getting the feeling that what a lot of people think about green energy and clean energy and why it’s not happening is wrong, isn’t it?
Kelli:
And that’s why we don’t have it.
I’m Kelli Pierce, an award-winning journalist and the Digital media associate at R Street.
Shoshana:
I’m Shoshana Weismann, Sloth Committee Chair and a fellow at R Street.
Kelli:
And this is Red Tape.
Shosh, you’re kind of internet famous for loving hiking and loving sloths. Is the air always clear up there or do you sometimes inhale a bunch of smog?
*Theme Music Out*
Shoshana:
Usually, my problem is more just thin air when I’m hiking, as I do a lot just because I like hiking. And I hiked through some really bad wildfire smoke in 2021. I actually wore masks while hiking because I had so much trouble breathing and my eyes kept tearing up. But the cool thing is that I’m often near wind farms. I go to very windy places with interesting terrain, and there’s just like tons of wind farms where I’m at.
Kelli:
I want to make sure you don’t get hit by the fan blades while you’re choking on all the air pollution. No, but seriously, there’s such a demand for green energy and other things that will clean our environment cheaply and make your hiking better. But we keep shooting ourselves in the foot.
Shoshana:
Oh yeah. So Kelli, who are you speaking with today and why can’t we harness the sun’s ray’s for evil… I mean energy?
Kelli:
Well, Josiah Neeley can tell you why the government’s getting in your way on that one. He’s R Street’s Texas director, but he also pulls double duty as our resident senior fellow studying energy. And what he says about why we don’t have a lot of wind and solar, it’ll probably surprise you. After that is Phil Rossetti, R Street senior fellow. He also studies energy, but we’ll talk about NEPA.
Shoshana:
Oh yeah, NEPA. Everyone knows what that is.
Kelli:
You’ll see what it is.
Shoshana:
You laugh, but I want to know because I have a feeling that it might be some pretty bad regulation.
Kelli:
Oh, you have no idea. And the power grid is something we don’t talk about every day, but Josiah’s going to tell us why it’s vitally important to meet our green energy goals. And he’s also going to talk about what’s tripping us up when it comes to getting those green projects hooked up to the grid. And I have to say, it was not what I expected.
*Theme Music In*
Shoshana:
One of my favorite lines from King of the Hill was in the 2000, like the turn of the century episode where everyone’s freaking out about the grid and Bobby says, “What’s the grid?” And Hank says something like, “That’s just it, Bobby. Nobody knows.” All right, listeners, here’s Kelli’s conversation with Josiah.
*Theme Music Out*
Kelli:
Hey, Josiah. So how’s it out there in Texas right now?
Josiah Neeley, Guest:
It’s warm. Beautiful day outside. Everything’s going great, in terms of the weather at least.
Kelli:
Oh no. Texas giving you trouble?
Josiah:
Well, the legislature is in session, so there’s always danger from that. You’re never safe.
Kelli:
Oh, as an ex-Californian, I understand.
Josiah:
Oh, yes. Yeah. Well, that’s a whole other level, I suppose.
Kelli:
So Josiah, when does Texas freeze over and every California lose power to their house forever?
Josiah:
Yeah. Well, that kind of already happened, of course. Two years ago there was a big freeze in Texas. There was a lot of blackouts. Still having issues, PTSD, related to that, many people. And of course, California has been having problems this entire millennia, I guess technically, since the nineties. Seems like there’s always yearly rotating blackouts, so on and so forth. Though the power has always come back on, at least so far.
Kelli:
No, it doesn’t. And I think also going back to the grid, it’s not something we think about until we hear stories of major power outages in the news, like in Texas and California. But it really is a vital piece of this clean energy puzzle because you know, you need the energy to charge up your electric car, for example.
Josiah:
Yeah, I mean, we use energy for everything. It powers the whole economy. So obviously here, air conditioning is very important. Heating in the winter is very important. The lights are very important. Your wifi, it’s a basic human right, being able to surf the web. But also manufacturing, service, every part of the economy is totally dependent on reliable energy and particularly electricity. So that’s why it is very important to maintain a reliable electric grid and also have a system that delivers energy to us that is not prohibitively expensive.
Kelli:
I feel like the grid’s still kind of under strain and having trouble integrating clean energy, and I’m kind of wondering whether the government’s doing it because a lot of states or localities are under a monopoly. Does that factor in?
Josiah:
Yeah, so you’re right. As you allude to, in most of the country, if you are an individual, if you’re a business, you do not have options. You don’t have a choice. I mean, you have one choice in terms of who your electric provider is going to be. It’s a monopoly utility. It might be owned by your city, but it could be a private company that gets regulated as a monopoly. And that monopoly will also, oftentimes they’ll own the power plants, they’ll own the transmission lines up and down the line.
That research, I think, has shown pretty clearly that is not a great deal for consumers in a couple of respects. One is it does tend to be more expensive. When you don’t have competitive pressures driving costs down, then customers end up paying more. But the other issue, which you allude to, is monopolies, they tend to do things the way they’ve always done things. They get kind of stuck in their ways, again, because they don’t have that pressure to change. And so they’re not very good with innovation. They’re not very good with changing technologies.
And this I think has been a broader issue where the energy sector and electricity over the last couple decades, the changes in technology have just been amazing, both in terms of different fuel types, but also we now have the capacity to do all sorts of more things with smart meters, dynamic responding. We have data minute to minute about where the electricity is coming from, second to second even. And there’s a lot of potential value to be gotten out of that. And I think the monopoly utility model has not proven to be the best at taking advantage of that.
Kelli:
And that seems like it just drives up our prices for electricity just in general, right?
Josiah:
Oh, yes. Yeah.
Kelli:
Why aren’t there more clean energy projects really hooked up to the grid? I mean, can the power lines handle them or are there problems we need to sort out with things like wind and solar energy?
Kelli:
Because I was hearing before that some of the electricity storage was pretty bad on some of the renewables.
Josiah:
Yeah. So this is a matter I think of the technology has just recently come into its own. It’s really only recently in the past decade, maybe a decade and a half, that the prices have come down that these technologies, wind and solar, are not only price competitive, but they’re actually cheaper. They can produce electricity cheaper than pretty much any other source because they don’t require fuel, right? If you’re a natural gas, you have to buy the gas. If you’re a coal plant, you need to get the coal. But if you are a windmill, you have to pay to build the turbine, of course, and to maintain it, but the wind comes for free, right? So that, among other reasons, has meant that they tend to be very cheap. So there has been a big build out in those, but they are new, so that takes some time to adjust to.
And then they also, unlike a traditional plant, which you can sort of put anywhere, a windmill kind of has to be where the window is, right? A solar panel, you can put it anywhere, but you’re going to get a lot more out of it if you’re in a place that’s sunny most of the time than if you’re in a place that’s cloudy and cold and the days are short, right? So it happens that the best places to produce wind and solar power are not the places where people live. If you think of where’s an ideal place for, there’s a lot of winds, you can have a lot of wind power, it would be somewhere like Iowa. Or Texas is good too, but the wind here in Texas is the best in west Texas. The people all live in east Texas in the so-called Texas Triangle basically between San Antonio, Dallas, and Houston. So that’s fine. It just means that you have to connect those up with new transmission projects, other things like that. That is happening, but it takes a little bit of time.
Likewise, traditionally you have not had storage technology that was commercially accessible, right? Now, batteries are starting to come into their own. So we expect that that will have astounding potentially effects on the whole nature of the grid if you can store this electricity, because of course, one issue with renewables being intermittent is that sometimes they’re producing a lot of electricity and the demand just isn’t there for all of it and so a lot of it gets wasted. If they were able to produce and store that electricity and then use it during the heat of the day or other peak times, that would fundamentally reorient the nature of the electricity market. And that I think is going to happen. But because these technologies are new, and as I mentioned earlier, these things, they don’t play out on a politician’s timetable.
Kelli:
I also think we have to face a reality that some of this clean energy changeover will be kind of expensive to people. And I remember a couple years ago, I was at a news conference in a working class town in California, and yes, they have them, quite a few of them, and everyone presenting was encouraging people to change from gas to electric stoves, something that’s been in the news quite a bit. And the price tag for our homeowner at the time to do that was $10,000 because you know it’s not just switching it out. You got to cap the gas line, you have to make sure the wall’s all pretty, et cetera. And so $10,000, and that was a couple years ago. When us reporters brought up how much something like that costs for lower income households, one of the representatives was just like, “Oh yeah, people just want to do that. They have an extra $10,000 just hanging around, right?” No one has that right now. But I think we have to be realistic about the fact that this is going to be an expense in some ways for regular people.
Josiah:
Yeah. In particular, if you rush things and try and do everything at once, the expense, it could be astronomical. If you’re talking about electricity versus gas for your home, it makes a huge difference. Are you talking about a new home or one that it’s already built? Because, as you say, to rip out your gas system, your existing gas system and replace it with electricity, that can cost tens of thousands of dollars, right? If you’re building something new, there might not be actually any cost difference doing it as gas versus electric.
So that I think is the normal way that these processes play out. It’s the same thing with power plants. If you have a power plant, if wind and solar are cheaper than gas plants or coal plants, that doesn’t mean that the day that happens, all the gas and coal plants shut down because those plants that are already built, they can still have value and produce energy over the course of many decades. So these energy transitions historically have played out over the scale of decades. If you do it that way, the cost is much, much less and it’s a lot easier to bear if you do it through a market process as opposed to trying to have the government force it happen all at once. So that I think is a reason why we might want to be a little bit cautious about some of these ambitious government mandated transitions.
Kelli:
If you had to sum it up, why don’t we have clean energy and how can we get it? So regular people are not price gouged?
Josiah:
Yeah, I think the optimism, the optimistic take is clean energy is coming, it is the future. The transition takes a while, and it will be slower if government regulation and monopolies slow it down. But since these technologies in most cases already exist and they already are cheap, I think it’s inevitable that we are going to see this transition over the coming decades.
Kelli:
So given the coming electricity boom, we’ve been talking about, will you encourage your kid to be a Wichita lineman?
*Theme Music In*
Josiah:
Well, one of my sons, he is definitely interested in math and he also is interested in danger and risks. So that might be… I don’t know, maybe that’s a good combination for him.
*Theme Music Out*
Shoshana:
So Kelli, what are some of the things we’re doing at R Street to help solve the problem?
Kelli:
Well, one of the biggest things is competition. We go around to different states trying to level the playing field so consumers have more options where they get their power from. We also let states know how they can strengthen their grids as more people start to buy electric cars. And why the market not mandates is a better way to go. After all, like Josiah said, the market is way ahead of the government in this area. And it’s also about changing the conversation. A lot of people don’t know that cleaner and greener is cheaper, but we must have the flexibility and policy vision to modernize our grid so everyone, particularly lower income folks, are able to get the benefit of a cleaner, greener environment and not be forced to pay through the nose for their power bill.
Shoshana:
Yeah. And it is interesting to learn how we insert and how we advocate for inserting market power more into something that is understandably kind of a natural monopoly, but how to stop that and how to really open up competition. Because especially when you get into policy, people talk about natural monopolies and broadband in anything where kind of wires or water or other stuff is running through your house. I guess Kool-Aid if you want to run some Kool-Aid pipes through your house and have a national Kool-Aid policy, but right now it’s like water, electricity and stuff. I’m not a big Kool-Aid fan. I’m not opposed to it. I’m just not…
Kelli:
So Kool-Aid is just not your choice what you’re saying?
Shoshana:
Yeah, it’s coffee. All right, so now that we know a bit more about the grid and how it works and what the heck the grid is, you’re going to speak with Phil Rossetti about environmental paperwork, which sounds really fun.
Kelli:
Oh, it sounds incredibly interesting, but you can consider this the real red tape portion of the show.
*Theme Music In*
Shoshana:
I just feel like you should totally say Red tape just because it’s the name of the show and it’s cute.
Kelli:
I love integrating everything into the continuum. Red Tape from R Street will be back after this quick break.
*Theme Music Out*
*Mid Roll*
*Transition Music Sting*
Shoshana:
You’re listening to Red Tape from R street. So Kelli, for those rare people listening who aren’t energy regulatory policy nerds, explain what the heck NEPA is.
Kelli:
I know who is an energy regulatory policy nerd at this point, right?
Shoshana:
Right. Yeah.
Kelli:
NEPA’s short for the National Environmental Policy Act. So that’s a federal law that requires agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of their actions. And it sounds simple enough, right? But as Phil’s about to tell us, it’s become a way we as citizens put bureaucracy ahead of our clean energy goals.
Shoshana:
Yeah. And isn’t there just endless paperwork that can go on for, I don’t know, years and years? And wasn’t it supposed to be in the quantity of days, not months or years for this stuff?
Kelli:
It was supposed to be something super simple, but of course, it’s become something super complicated. And it’s interesting that this subject’s being talked about so much on social media now because Phil was doing it long before anyone else.
*Theme Music In*
I mean, you won’t believe how many clean energy projects, again, are getting strangled by red tape. I have to say that over again because it’s insane.
Shoshana:
I thought you were going to say it over again because Red Tape is the name of the show. I thought you were going for that thing again. All right, let’s get to the interview.
*Theme Music Out*
Kelli:
So I used to produce a show called Inside Sources with Boyd Matheson. It’s on KSL News Radio in Utah. And so Phil would be on and he would be talking about clean energy, but it was so unique because he would talk about, how do you actually get those clean energy projects online? And it’s something that’s important to both Republicans and Democrats because obviously we’re all breathing the same air, and they are very interested here, even though it’s a red state, in getting more clean energy, getting us off of fossil fuels, dependence on Saudi Arabia, that kind of thing. But there was always sort of a disconnect of why aren’t we actually having clean energy? And Phil would be there to explain. Yeah, it’s basically bureaucracy’s getting in your way.
Philip Rossetti, Guest:
Yeah, I mean, bureaucracy, it’s never like a help, right? Nobody’s like, “Oh yeah, bureaucracy really, really helped us get this through quickly.” But yeah, when you talk about clean energy, it’s interesting because that’s where most of the investment is. That’s where people want to build and that’s where they see the money. And a lot of it’s just like, they want to build, and there are all these sort of small things that are holding them back.
Kelli:
It’s also crazy to me that it can be people on the left stopping projects.
Phil:
Yeah. There was a great no opinion article where he just kind of looked at all these renewable energy projects that are basically getting killed by conservation groups. And we’re seeing this dynamic at play because one is, there are localized environmental impacts from any sort of infrastructure project, clean energy included. So sometimes you have this weird dynamic where you have an organization that actually will outwardly say, “Okay, we want global clean energy. We want 100% renewable energy even.” And then when they actually say, “Okay, this one project which might interfere with habitat,” then they kind of cross the line and say, “No, no, no, we can’t do this,” because our consideration or concern for endangered species or habitats often supersedes those.
Kelli:
I know people are just dying to hear a podcast about bureaucratic paperwork, but it really is one of the main things, killing clean energy infrastructure. So one of the things I keep seeing popping up is this acronym, NEPA, N-E-P-A. According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website, NEPA stands for the National Environmental Policy Act. And it’s a law that requires federal agencies to assess the environmental effects of their actions before making decisions. But that’s kind of vague. What does it do and how does it affect which projects we build in the US?
Phil:
It’s a great name for a law because it’s also a little misleading in a way because it does not actually create new environmental protections, which you would think it would given the name. It’s the National Environmental Policy Act. Of course it’s like an environmental thing. But you got to kind of go back in time. So it came about in 1969, and I believe it was signed into law January 1970. And at the time, there wasn’t even an Environmental Protection Agency. There wasn’t a Department of Energy. It was kind of the wild west for environmental regulation.
The idea of NEPA was, at the time, not this process to expand environmental protections, but it was this idea of, okay, we are going to make an easier process to comply with all these new environmental regulations that are popping up in the states. And basically what NEPA does, it says, “Anything that requires a major federal action, so that can be federal investment or it can be on federal land, or might just need federal approval for some regulatory issues, anything that falls in that category needs to go through NEPA.” And in a nutshell, what NEPA is, is a government agency. Depending on the project, it will determine which agency. That agency will assess the environmental impact of a project and make a public document, which can get commented on, and then they release a final impact statement and then they release a decision.
And NEPA is not the only part of the permitting process, but it has drawn a lot of attention, and it’s been my big focus, because when we talk about the infrastructure efforts that have the most potential, the biggest ones, almost all of those have to go through NEPA. And the bigger the project, the longer it’s going to take as well.
Kelli:
Man. So I got to ask, where is the government getting it wrong setting these rules and regulations around infrastructure? Something else that keeps just popping up is environmental review, as you’ve said just in general. Can you help us understand what goes into one and where the government’s getting it wrong and that rules and regulations?
Phil:
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a little interesting because it’s not so much that government just changed something and then got it all wrong. It’s been this kind of creep of issues. So initially, it took about two years was the expectation of how long it would take to go from when you start the NEPA process to getting a decision. And now it’s closer to four, four and a half years, depending on the metric. Sometimes it could be three and a half years or it could be lower for different projects.
But basically, what we’ve seen change really over the past like 15, 20 years that’s made NEPA more prominent is one is the underlying regulations have grown a lot. So NEPA is probably going to be your best bet to delay a project. And what we’ve seen is the courts, so a decision will get issued and then a public interest group might challenge it in court, and this then sends a signal to the agencies preparing the documents, “Oh, if I prepare a weak document, I’m going to lose in court, so I need to address and preempt a lot of the concerns that might come up in court.” So we see… Yeah. Now the agencies, these documents that are supposed to only be a couple hundred pages long can be thousands of pages long, and some environmental reviews can even take a decade or more. There’s one case where it took like 25 years.
So there’s all these considerations that have to be accounted for, which the agencies might know, or they might not know, because they don’t actually know until it gets challenged in court. And opponents to these decisions have pretty much unlimited flexibility to find any flaw with the compliance and then send it back to the drawing board and needing further review.
So that’s really the big issue, is the litigation aspects where agencies just don’t know what they need to include in the environmental reviews. And that’s, I think, the biggest hold up, and also really the most potential to improve upon because you don’t have to touch endangered species or environmental protections. You just have to give clarity to the agencies on what they need to include in their documents.
Kelli:
It seems like there’s no flexibility in the law, like you were talking about. And normally when we think of laws based around clean energy projects, we think, “Oh, this must all be based on science,” but it doesn’t seem like it is entirely based on science.
Phil:
I’d say pretty much none of it is based on science. NEPA, as an umbrella law, is more just kind of a policy instinct, where it’s just the policymakers saying, “Okay, we don’t really know what the whole array of environmental regulations there are, what all the scientific issues might be, but we’re going to let the agencies figure it out.” And that’s where we start to see this bizarre situation where they almost have too much leeway. They can write whatever they want in the impact statement, but the worse quality it is, the more likely it is to lose in court. And that’s what we’ve seen. You have some agencies where they prepare these documents really quickly and they’re short page counts, and they lose a lot more often than the agencies that take twice as long to prepare and might have much longer page counts.
Kelli:
So that’s how things really end up in the rule book. It’s just sort of like someone sitting in a government office going, “Yes, I think this should be in there.” “No, it shouldn’t.” Or is that a little too over simplistic?
Phil:
I guess the better way of thinking about NEPA is NEPA’s more like, there might be a thousand regulations you got to comply with if you want to build something new. And NEPA is just kind of your one stop shop where you just say, “Okay, I’m going to go to the government and they’re going to tell me what I need to do, and if I comply with these environmental regulations.” So it’s supposed to actually simplify the process. But the underlying regulations have grown so much because regulators are going to regulate. That’s the tool they have.
And I think what we kind of missed the ball on the regulatory conversation is regulations are sometimes a victim of their own success in a way. Regulations in the past, in the eighties, nineties, or in really early 2000s, have been enormously successful at reducing pollution. But you have this diminishing returns effect, where the more successful your regulations have been at abating pollution, the less potential benefit there is from new regulations. But regulators are always going to have to justify their policies. So they’re always looking for more benefits, and they’re always looking for new regulations. And that’s been bad for NEPA because the complexity of navigating these processes has not gone simpler, even though one would think that having cleaner air and better environmental standards should make it more apparent and clearer.
Kelli:
One objection and one issue that comes up with clean infrastructure projects a lot are its effects on animals, and endangered species and their habitats. But it does seem like there are ways to make it a win-win, like you’ve been talking about.
Phil:
Yeah. Well, I think what’s really interesting is sometimes these issues are solvable when we actually get into it and say, “Okay, here is…”
Phil:
What we need to do to actually expand protections or improve protections for endangered species.” Sometimes it’s this rigidity of the law where you run into a problem. There’s a project in Nevada where they’re trying to build a lithium mine, and they are running into problems because there’s an endangered species of buckwheat. Now, this is a pretty significant lithium mine. It would produce a ton of lithium, which would be used for electric vehicles. And the project itself is actually going to great lengths to try to be environmentally friendly, like they’re using carbon-neutral energy and trying to do as much as they can to make this the cleanest lithium mine that you could find. But it doesn’t make up for the fact that there’s an endangered species there, and you can’t build this mine anywhere else, and there’s got to be something in place to actually protect that species. Or maybe there’s a way of expanding habitat in an area that wasn’t present before.
And these questions just haven’t really been talked about. And I think that when we do try to say, “Okay, instead of looking at does this affect an endangered species? Yes or no,” but instead say, “Can we have a net improvement in outcomes?” That’s where you can get creative and you can say, “Okay, we can actually improve the environmental quality at the same time,” but the law doesn’t allow that flexibility in many respects.
Kelli:
Is there a congressional solution here where they make NEPA or other laws a little more clear as to what you can and can’t do?
Phil:
And this is what’s getting debated right now. So there’s this big effort from the House Republicans called HR 1, and this includes a pretty hefty reform to NEPA. And what’s interesting is… So HR 1 includes the permit reform and the NPA changes, and it also includes a lot of other conservative priorities on fossil fuel infrastructure and more drilling, because I mean, they’re very focused on gasoline prices right now. So it’s been a big thing.
And when it went to the Senate, or basically when it passed the House, the Senate… So Senator Schumer is basically trashing HR 1, which is not a surprise because it had all these Republican priorities, but then basically in the same breath, he’s like, “Oh, but the permit reform could be an interesting conversation.” So yeah, we do see this really interesting dynamic where both the Democrats and the Republicans want to have some sort of congressional solution on NEPA and on permitting reform. A lot of what they’re talking about is actually the same stuff, really kind of focused on standing and litigation risks and not touching the other sort of challenges, like the ESA or any of these more controversial topics. So I’m pretty optimistic, but it’s going to be a long slog. But there is a congressional solution. I’d say that’s where you get most of the benefit, actually.
*Theme Music In*
Kelli:
Yeah, definitely. But at the end of the day, when it comes to our projects or congressional legislation, it does come down, I think, to choices and values and what you want. It seems like you’ve kind of got to check your privileges and decide what’s more important. Do you want to fight climate change, give poor people access to clean energy, or does a species with one or two members in the middle of the desert win out?
*Theme Music Out*
Shoshana:
So it’s really funny because everyone used to freak out at the prospect of reforming regulations because of environmental concerns. If I talk about regulatory reform and someone’s not really familiar with who I am and the way I think about stuff, people will be like, “Oh, so you want these big companies to throw nuclear waste into the water.” That’s, I think, the way people, unfortunately, who aren’t nerds like us, think about regulatory reform. So it’s really funny that it turns out we actually need to reform these regulations to advance the environment.
Kelli:
It just turns everything on its head, doesn’t it? I mean, if we don’t change what we do, it’s going to be that project in Wyoming. Did you see that one?
Shoshana:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Kelli:
It’s 15 years for the feds to approve a transmission line from a wind farm in Wyoming to Las Vegas, and it’ll be years still before that line is built. We definitely need to change the conversation around regulations. And I think Phil’s helping to do that.
Shoshana:
Oh, yeah. And we can’t wait that long for new energy and for clean energy if we’re worried about climate change. That just doesn’t vibe together. So what are some of the things we’re doing at R Street to help solve this problem?
Kelli:
The biggest thing for me is changing the conversation about permitting reform, because if you don’t start thinking differently there, we won’t get to where we wanna go
Shoshana:
Yeah, and I’m also a big fan of nagging your elected officials to do things that make sense. Um, nagging works. I’m a big, I’m a big proponent of it, but, um, it’s nice cuz this is something that kind of brings people together and, and helps ’em see. Yeah, like, let’s, let’s have more energy, let’s have more clean energy.
Kelli:
And it’s nice that R Street was talking about it before all the cool kids on social media.
Shoshana:
Oh yeah, absolutely. It’s really cool to see all different kinds of people be like, “Yeah, we kind of need more and more clean energy.”
Kelli:
Amen.
*Theme Music In*
Well, Shosh, hopefully we can all agree after listening to Josiah and Phil that, while clean energy is something we all want, there’s a lot of reasons why we’re getting in our own way. Here’s a final question for you. Look into the future, let’s say 40 years from now. How clean do you think our energy will be?
Shoshana:
I don’t know. I’m an optimist, so I think that we can make a lot of progress. It’s one reason I like working here, because you get to bring people together on issues that just kind of make sense. I’m hopeful that we’re going to get more nuclear, we’ll have more all kinds of energy, but especially nuclear. I’m really excited for that. So fingers crossed, I think we’re going to make a lot of progress in the next 40 years, like a lot of progress.
Kelli:
Yeah. And it’s very encouraging to see those conversations changing online because a lot of times we dismiss what’s online.
Shoshana:
It’s funny to see the conversations on Twitter become like actual policy. It doesn’t always happen, but when it does, it’s really cool to see lots of nerds coming together, and then Congress being like, “Oh man, these nerds are kind of right.”
Kelli:
So Congress is responding to the mob of nerds. Wonderful. But I agree with it in this case.
Shoshana:
Yeah, yeah. It’s nice when it works out, when they talk to the good nerds,
Kelli:
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see. Until then.
Shoshana:
Until then.
Kelli:
Red Tape is produced by R Street in partnership with Pod People.
Shoshana:
To learn more about the work we’re doing at R Street, follow us on LinkedIn and on Twitter, and our Twitter is @RSI.
Kelli:
And for more resources and information on the topics we explore today, you can check out rstreet.org.
Shoshana:
Also, if you’ve enjoyed listening to today’s episode, the best thing you can do is share Red Tape with a friend or an enemy.
Kelli:
And if you’re an overachiever, please leave a glowing review and rate us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help us introduce the show to new listeners.
Shoshana:
I’m Shoshana Weissmann.
Kelli:
I’m Kelli Pierce.
Shoshana:
Thanks for listening,
*Theme Music Out*
Audio Logo:
Pod People.
