The American West has so much solar & geothermal potential. But the federal government owns most of the land, and federal permitting rules are a nightmare. This bipartisan permitting reform deal would unlock energy abundance.

Also this is nuts: “French workers have been known to strike by kidnapping their chief executives – a practice that the public there reportedly supports” ukfoundations.co/

Fun fact - while I worked at OIRA in the Biden admin for (ardent environmentalist) Administrator Revesz, CBD's Brett Hartl sent us this charming public comment: Folks should listen to experts focused on the benefits (huge) & costs (small) of the permitting bill, not dogmatists.

Whole thread from David is worth reading, but this part at the end about the political calculus of permitting reform is especially important

Climate hawks have one thing on our side: the cost of clean energy is going down all the time. But we also have big hurdles: the energy transition requires a lot of building, and we don’t have time on our side. We have to pass this permitting bill this Congress!

Actual climate scientist here. The permitting reform bill was introduced by Senate climate champions like @SenWhitehouse. It will reduce US emissions. We don't have the luxury to make the perfect the enemy of the good – which time and time again has led to doing nothing at all.

IFP @reedschwartzsf explains how 2 neighbors in San Francisco can own similar homes yet pay $200 vs $20,000 a year in property taxes under Prop 13: "I think it is very plausible you could find a home paying $200 a year and a home paying $20,000 a year right next to each other." "The way Prop 13 works is the value that the government assesses your house at is capped at the purchase price plus 1% per year, starting in 1975." "If you bought in 1975, we had enormous inflation after that, and land prices have gone way up. If you bought for $10,000 and you're paying 1% in property taxes, it's just significantly less than if you bought for $2 million. Very plausible in San Francisco today." @IFP

It’s instructive to see groups ostensibly dedicated to fighting climate change say they don’t think a bill should be judged by whether it reduces carbon emissions.

This looks like a very, very good bill. Hoping like hell it can pass after the House returns, post-midterms. It's a massive win for the abundance movement to get a thorough bill like this.

People on here will be like “no one talks about Abundance anymore” Meanwhile… our spies are everywhere, undermining the degrowthers from the inside

Good pick. Under his tenure, SDNY did some great work on prosecuting chip smuggling cases. Hopefully he’ll bring that energy to the role too.

Ah yes, the primary obstacle to the money-saving roll out of clean energy generation is ... Environmental protection laws. Ffs.

So how will the permitting reform deal (BAAJA) get big transmission lines built? 🧵: - The problem: America builds hardly any inter-regional transmission and the few lines that get build take decades - Transmission lines are built by electric utilities (regulated monopolies) that build infrastructure and pass costs to ratepayers (homes and businesses) - Utilities cooperate within their region to build regional grids - But building transmission lines across regions is nearly impossible because: A. The regions cannot agree on how to determine who pays B. Utilities are incentivized to prioritize local projects they fully control C. Incumbent generators oppose inter-regional lines because they would lower costs for consumers, cutting incumbent generators' bottom line - So utilities don't build inter-regional lines. There are ZERO inter-regional projects being built under FERC Order 1000 (the main federal process for inter-regional transmission). -The only transmission projects that get built across regions are a tiny handful of "merchant" transmission lines, built by developers at their own risk. - Merchant lines are the project you see in the news that often take 17+ years just to begin construction. - And only a few merchant lines even make it to the finish line. Of 23 projects that began between 2000-2015 only 6 have begun construction and only 4 others are still under consideration. Simply put, the system doesn't work. So how does BAAJA fix inter-regional transmission? - BAAJA adopts a two-pronged approach: (1) requiring regions to complete inter-regional planning and (2) making it easier for developers to build projects themselves. 1. BAAJA requires regions to pair up with their neighbors and complete inter-regional planning based on a common set of benefits. 2. If the regions choose inter-regional lines together BAAJA gives those lines special regulatory treatment. If individual states deny an inter-regional line, FERC can give the chosen inter-regional line federal siting and permitting. 3. BAAJA also provides for a common cost-allocation method and gives FERC authority to approve cost-allocation for selected lines. 4. BAAJA revives existing authority for federal siting and permitting by getting rid of the need for NIETC corridors. 5. The bill allows developers to propose lines in the national interest based on stated criteria. If states deny these lines, FERC must give qualified projects federal siting and permitting authority to bypass the states. - The two prongs work together: Inter-regional planning is the main process for building out inter-regional transmission lines. - The developer-led process is the incentive — if utility regions fail to build inter-regional lines, developers will be able to go to FERC and propose lines over the utilities and regions' heads. All together this is an absolutely MASSIVE win for building inter-regional transmission! x.lingyaoai.com/AidanRMackenzie/status…

Would love to work with someone who can do this:

Come work with me at @IFP! We're hiring a data viz/graphic designer. Apply if you want to design the graphic that a senator's staffer brings when they pitch cosponsors on joining a bill, confident it’s worth a thousand words. ifp.org/opportunity/graphic-…

This graph should sink home for all of us. And keep in mind: 2010-2018 was a period when solar and wind growth was far slower than it is now. Solar was a miniscule part of new electricity capacity in this period, for example, yet a major share of all federal studies under the National Environmental Policy Act. That's insane.

A lot of intellectual puzzles disappear if you model all 'endowments' – reliable incomes or wealth or property that people receive – as being possessions or rights in the eyes of the public. There is a tendency to see only classic common law property rights as actual, genuine property. In a sense, this is true. But I think to reify this distinction too much, we are applying our own moral distinctions to the situation artificially, in a way that doesn't predict people's behaviour. I think it's easier to understand people's behaviour if we see quite a few more things as morally like 'property' in the eyes of those affected: government payments – disability benefits, pensions, housing benefits, in-kind benefits like social housing, and valuable states of affairs that people have a stake in and care a lot about and have historically managed to keep fairly stable, like the character of their neighbourhood. All that's really going on here is the endowment effect. In general, people prefer to hold onto something versus getting a new thing of an equal value. My contention is that extent of the experienced endowment effect is largely driven by different dimensions of social trust. For example, developing countries find it very difficult to expropriate property in service of public goods, and they do it very seldom. The most developed countries can take property easily. (Compare building a metro in Delhi versus building it in France: in France the promoters will demolish freely; in Delhi they will build it over roads and rights of way they already own.) Drawing this out, an implication of my contention is that the paradigm feature of state & social development is being able to change endowments. The more people a government can, with public consent, make worse off, in service of a social end, the more developed it is. This is why I say that the recent inability of the Labour government to justify either raising taxes (making taxpayers worse off) or cutting benefits (making recipients worse off) in service of the nation's wellbeing (producing public goods), is an indicator of Britain's falling development level. Same for the US. x.lingyaoai.com/bswud/status/204113912…

Completely insane that we're allowing this

This is an exceptional bill. The kind of legislating Congress should be doing regularly. Let's hope it can get through.

Mountain Valley Pipeline was to be built in 10 months and cost $3.5 bln; it took 8 years/$9.6 bln. SunZia wind+ transmission took 17 years to permit & build. The Vogtle nuclear plant took 18 years. Permitting reform ensures projects get to yes, or no, quickly and with certainty.