The bipartisan Senate permitting deal would limit legal challenges to energy and infrastructure projects while expanding federal authority to review major projects alongside state reviews. Senators from both parties announced the agreement Wednesday, saying it would speed permitting as electricity demand grows. But the public may get no chance to weigh in or amend it before a vote.
Brad Campbell, president of the Conservation Law Foundation, said the deal “appears to adopt a fossil fuel industry wish-list.” He warned it could roll back clean water and endangered species protections, limit judicial review, and curtail the Environmental Protection Agency’s and states’ authority to consider project impacts. His criticism points to who may lose influence as senators promise a faster path for construction.
Who Gets to Challenge the Projects
The bill would limit legal challenges under the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider possible environmental impacts before approving projects. Lawmakers have increasingly blamed the law for stalling projects. The measure would also restrict challenges under the National Historic Preservation Act, which protects Native American cultural treasures and other important artifacts.
The deal would ease the siting of interstate transmission lines and strengthen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority to review major projects at the same time as state reviews. That shifts more weight toward federal review while narrowing some avenues for legal challenge. The agreement covers energy projects of all types, as lawmakers from both parties backed new construction.
Campbell objected to the bill’s substance and the process. “Striking this deal in the waning days of this Congress, in a pact and on a schedule that preclude public input or amendment, before midterm elections that can only improve the prospects for a more balanced approach, is indefensible,” he said. Under that schedule, the public can't offer input or amendments.
Who Pays for the Rush
The bill would require data centers to pay for the additional electricity and associated transmission costs they use, rather than shifting those costs to families or businesses. According to the senators promoting the deal, expanding data centers for artificial intelligence is one reason electricity demand is rising. Sen. Martin Heinrich said families and businesses shouldn't be left with the bill for grid upgrades data centers require.
Heinrich said the legislation “will mean more energy on the grid, more good-paying jobs, and lower electricity costs for families and businesses.” He added that it would ensure data centers “pay their fair share of the grid upgrades they require.” That promise comes alongside a broader effort to speed construction by limiting challenges and changing review authority.
Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, chair of the Environment and Public Works Committee, called the agreement “a major step toward making it faster and more efficient and easier to build infrastructure projects” while maintaining environmental protections. She said the existing system had been filled with “delays, expenses, red tape, uncertainty,” then added: “Too long, too expensive. And we’ve seen projects that should be finished more quickly (take) decades” to complete.
A Vote After the Elections
A Senate vote won't happen until after the midterm elections. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who chairs the energy committee, said he was confident the bill would pass during a lame-duck session in November 2026, citing bipartisan support and encouragement from business and environmental groups. Four senators who lead the chamber’s energy and environment panels presented the agreement: Capito, Lee, Heinrich and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island.
Whitehouse said Democrats still wanted clarity on how the bill would prevent President Donald Trump’s administration from blocking wind and solar projects. Whitehouse and Heinrich criticized what they called Trump’s “reckless and vindictive assault on wind energy.” In December, the administration suspended five offshore wind projects, citing unspecified national security concerns; federal judges later allowed the projects to move forward. A federal judge also struck down Trump’s executive order blocking wind projects early in his second term.
Trump had recently offered to ease his administration’s hold on renewable energy projects, partly to encourage Democrats to agree to permitting legislation. Whitehouse called that proposal reasonable, but said the broader issue remained “unresolved.” The White House said the bill would “deliver transformative policies to lower Americans’ energy and housing costs, drive new construction and investment in American infrastructure, and create American jobs.”