In this episode, Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) discuss their Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act, explaining where Democrats have found consensus around transmission permitting and community engagement.
Text transcript:
David Roberts
When permitting reform came up toward the end of the last session of Congress, it was a bit of a dumpster fire. Sen. Joe Manchin’s permitting compromise — which would have boosted clean energy and fossil fuel projects alike — sparked intense opposition among both progressives and Republican senators and ended up dying an unceremonious death.
The Democrats realized they were not prepared for the permitting discussion last time around. So this past year, Reps. Sean Casten (D-Ill.) and Mike Levin (D-Calif.) set out to pull together the Dem coalition around a common set of positions. The result is the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration (CETA) Act.
CETA would implement a number of changes that clean-energy reformers have long sought. It would empower the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to force utilities to do more and better interregional transmission planning, to take carbon into account when setting rates, to implement performance-based ratemaking, and to consider the use of grid-enhancing technologies. FERC would also have ultimate backstop permitting authority over interregional transmission lines, the way it currently does on natural gas pipelines.
So far so good. But the bill also includes several provisions meant to increase community engagement, which has elicited considerable angst among the left’s build-build-build faction, which thinks there are already too many ways for local groups to stymie transmission. Yet those provisions are what have attracted support from environmental justice groups.
To talk through all of this, I went to the source: Casten and Levin, two of Congress’s most vigorous and outspoken champions of clean energy. We talked about the legislative context, the provisions in the bill, the right way to think about community engagement, and future prospects for any of this becoming law.
All right then, with no further ado, Representatives Sean Casten and Mike Levin, welcome to Volts. Thank you so much for coming.
Mike Levin
Thank you. Great to be with you.
Sean Casten
Thanks for having us.
David Roberts
Before we jump into the details of the bill, the Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration Act, or CETA, where I want to start is — and I really do not intend this to be derogatory or deflationary at all, but just sort of a matter of factual context — which is: it's not obvious when this bill could actually pass and become law. A bill that is supporting transmission, making transmission easier, but not making fossil fuels easier is just going to be a non-starter with Republicans. They've got the House now. Even if Dems get both houses of Congress in the 2024 elections, which is somewhat unlikely, but even if that happened, you'd still need to overcome the filibuster.
You can't put this in a reconciliation bill. It's got a bunch of changes to rules and regulations in it. So the filibuster would have to go away. A whole series of unlikely events would have to happen for this to actually become law, so, which is just to say this is for the most part a messaging bill, a flag in the sand saying, "here's where we are." So I'm curious, and I'll start with you, Representative Levin. Just I'd like to hear a little bit about what is the purpose here and how much of it is just kind of trying to pull the coalition together and sort of getting everybody on record.
What's the thinking behind doing this?
Mike Levin
Well, Dave, are you trying to imply that Congress is somewhat dysfunctional at the moment?
David Roberts
Heaven forfend. I mean, even if the Republicans in the House supported the bill, they probably still couldn't pass it.
Mike Levin
Well, let me say a couple of things. One is that I've been in Congress for five years now, and Sean and I were both elected in 2018. And I think to my knowledge, he and I were the first to run on a platform of advocacy for clean energy. Actually on the ballot title — you have a title, and mine was "clean energy advocate." And I know Sean talked a lot about his work in the clean energy sector, and we ran and won on climate and energy and environmental policy. Really, a lot of folks here in this town told us not to do that, or at least they told me not to do that.
And what I've learned is, politics and Congress particularly is all about the art of the possible, the art of compromise and being prepared. And when preparation and opportunity intersect, you can actually get big things to happen. So when I first got here, and I think the same is true for Sean, we were told that we weren't going to get a major climate bill, that it just wasn't going to happen. It wasn't in the cards. And we both sat on the select committee for climate. We were appointed to that committee by Speaker Pelosi as two of the freshmen on the committee, two of the three, the other being Joe Neguse from Colorado, and we put together this incredibly comprehensive report.
So we brought together the best ideas and we were prepared for when the opportunity presented itself in the next Congress with what became the Inflation Reduction Act. But it didn't all just happen sequentially. It didn't happen as we expected or as anybody really could have predicted. But we were able to pass the most comprehensive climate bill in the history of the United States or the history of any country. And I think the same applies to the effort around permitting reform. We know the politics are difficult. We know that there are a lot of forces with very deep pockets against us.
Dave, you did a great job of highlighting some of the legacy of fossil fuel advocacy in one of your recent pods. All that's true. But what's also true is that if we're prepared and opportunistic, that when that right opportunity presents itself, you never know what's possible around here. And we're not going to give up because it's so critically important that we get this done.
David Roberts
Got it. So in a sense, this is just saying, "Should opportunity arise, we Democrats are united around this," basically, this set of policies.
Mike Levin
I think that's right. And it's all about how do we double the rate of transmission and invest in the renewable energy we need to meet the demand that will come from increased electrification across the country. And what we don't want is for permitting reform to become an excuse for the fossil fuel industry to make pipeline permitting easier. That's not what we're aiming for here. We've actually got to do the right thing for renewable energy to meet our goals.
Sean Casten
I think you have correctly diagnosed that if we limit ourselves to saying "What are the things that can be done, given the structure of the Senate and the existence of the filibuster and some very goofy rules?" we would conclude we shouldn't do anything. Campaign finance reform is off the table. Stopping gun violence is off the table.
David Roberts
Voting reform —
Sean Casten
The Voting Rights Act is off the table. And I think we should be — as lowercase D democrats — we should be horribly embarrassed by the fact that in 2022 the Senate passed a bill to make lynching a federal crime that the president signed into law: That bill first passed the House in 1922.
It is a real structural problem that it took the Senate 100 years to say that lynching is a crime. But we don't have 100 years to fix the climate crisis. And so, I think our challenge is that when we had this window in the last term, when we had the House, we had the Senate, we had the White House, we didn't have a policy focus bill to look to, and so we defaulted to what is the thing that Senator Manchin can get through Senate ENR (Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources) and the record will show he didn't get a damn thing through.
But we framed this as saying what is politically possible instead of what is scientifically necessary and what we try to do here is say, "let's get what's necessary down so that when the windows open, we've got something we can start from," and hopefully we'll get everything we ask for, but let's at least ask.
David Roberts
What a thought. What a thought. I love hearing the House and Senate cast accusations of dysfunction at one another because you can agree with everyone's, everyone's right. So, Representative Casten, let's start with you here. So the first three titles of the bill are about transmission. The bulk of the bill is about transmission. So maybe let's start at a somewhat general level and just say what is broken about our transmission system and why is stronger federal authority — like a lot of what's in the first three titles of this bill, is centering authority over various elements of the transmission system in FERC at the federal level.
So what's wrong now, and why is stronger federal authority the answer?
Sean Casten
So here's what we knew when we finalized what became the Inflation Reduction Act, because, remember, we started with Build Back Better was because we went through this parliamentary process in the Senate that we could only affect spending titles. We had to drop the policy provisions. And several of these things were actually some of our policy recommendations. What we know, the good work that Jesse Jenkins, who I think you've had on your podcast before, the good work that he's done is that we have to build transmission at three to five times the rate we have ever built transmission in the country in order to meet the climate goals of the Inflation Reduction Act.
When we talk about this is going to reduce CO2 emissions by 40%, it's true: we put enough money out there to do it. But if we're going to decarbonize by building generation where the renewable resources are, decarbonize by electrifying loads that currently don't have electric hookups, we're going to have to build wires to do that. And in any given year, the United States builds 10 to 100 times as many miles of high pressure gas distribution line as we do of high voltage electricity transmission.
David Roberts
Good grief. That's depressing.
Sean Casten
A part of the reason for that is that FERC has sole backstop authority for a gas pipeline, but nobody has sole backstop authority for an electric line. So if you want to build a gas pipeline, you may object to the construction, you may support the objection. You raise your concern with a single agency, and a decision is made. On an electric wire, if you get a decision you don't like at one county, well, you go to the next county on the border, and you pick it again there. You pick the next municipality, you pick the next state.
And so these fights go on forever. The second reason, though, is that the curse of clean energy is that it is so bloody economic. If you wanted to build a gas pipeline because, Dave, I know you're a big fracker, and Mike, who is a huge LNG exporter, wanted to be the other end of that gas pipeline, you both have a shared economic interest in building that pipeline. By contrast, if you wanted to build a wind turbine, and Mike is the utility in San Diego that's trying to figure out whether they are going to allow you to interconnect to their grid, that wind turbine is bringing cheap power that's going to displace more expensive power.
And Mike's the guy who makes money based on what the price of power is. And so there's this huge economic conflict of interest because the people who have the authority to decide what gets built and what gets connected have an economic disincentive to do things like lower congestion on the grid, lower the price of power. And so our mantra in this bill has been "let's fix the profit incentives, let's make sure that everybody can participate early on in the process," and then what's left with permitting is a fairly easy problem. But there's a reason why the energy industry is pushing so hard to make it easier to build gas pipelines that we can export, because, number one: well, basically, gas is struggling to compete against all this clean energy.
Gas exports are through the roof in the United States because we're getting energy from cheaper sources.
David Roberts
Right. I think this is such an important point, and Volts listeners are probably aware. I think it's important because I bang on about it incessantly in literally every pod I record. But if you go to a utility and say, "Hey, I can hook up this new power line, and it will reduce the cost of power in your area, and it will reduce your need to build new infrastructure in your area" that is just directly counter to the utility's financial interests. It could not be more straightforward. They don't want that to happen.
Sean Casten
I always love the line that somebody told me once in an interconnect fight that it's like "having to get a man's permission to date his wife." You understand it may be in her best interest, but you understand why that's going to be a hard negotiation.
David Roberts
Yeah. And you start to think, maybe his objections to this guy and this guy and this guy, maybe they're not above board, maybe there's something else going on here. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about then what this bill gives to FERC, what it allows FERC to do. Talk a little bit about kind of the new powers FERC would have from the bill.
Sean Casten
So I'm going to try to remember all of them. You'll chime in, Mike, if I've forgotten some.
David Roberts
There's a lot. When I went through the summary of the bill, I was like, "oh, all the things," you put all the things in here.
Sean Casten
We give them sole source authority, which is a big deal, so that now you can petition and they can be the adjudicator of disputes and not have 15 other adjudicators. We have a lot of provisions about cost allocation. One of the challenges when you build a wire is that the party who benefits is not always necessarily the party who bears the costs. And so provisions that say FERC has to go through and as much as possible, make sure that those who bear costs also share in the benefits.
David Roberts
Yeah, let me just jump in and clarify that a little bit, because this is also something we've touched on in previous pods, I think. I'm not sure if people have really internalized, but if you come with a new interconnection, a new line, you have to pay for all the upgrades necessary, even though the new line would benefit everyone in the territory or the utility itself, or a bunch of different parties would benefit from the new transmission. But you, as the transmission builder, all those costs are put on you. And that is, again, another insane feature of this system that it seems designed to stop it from happening.
Sean Casten
Yeah. So, let's align that. We have a completely balkanized grid, so there's provisions about boosting interregional ties.
David Roberts
Yeah, yeah.
Sean Casten
One of the reasons why Texas had their outage a couple of winters ago is because the Texas grid is largely an island. And if you want proof of that, just note that El Paso had the same weather, has the same generation mix, and they didn't lose their power because El Paso was actually not on the Texas grid.
David Roberts
Yeah —
Sean Casten
A little fun fact. One of the things that I think is most important here is having FERC issue performance-based rate making for regulated utilities, because under traditional cost recovery, utility rate making, a regulated utility earns a return on their capital.
And in theory, operating costs are all pass-throughs. And the theory of that is that way you can't make money by being inefficient. The flip side of that is that you can't make money by being efficient. And so all of your economic interests are around "I want to build capital that can earn a return and then get my guaranteed return on that capital." So what we've done there is to direct FERC to going into those regulated utilities and saying, let's go through and give you a higher return on equity if you do things like, I don't know, shorten the interconnection queue, help your state meet their RPS goals, reduce the congestion on your system.
So let's create a situation where the economic interests of energy producers and energy consumers are aligned.
David Roberts
Let's make it so that you make more money by doing a better job.
Sean Casten
Exactly.
David Roberts
A novel state of affairs.
Sean Casten
There's a ton more, but that's off the top of my head, Mike. Any big ones that I'm forgetting there on your end?
Mike Levin
I think the only thing I'd add, Sean, is the concept of intervener compensation.
David Roberts
We're going to get to that later, Mike. We're going to touch on that in the fourth section. But also it would create a FERC Office of Electricity Transmission, which is just a relatively simple thing with just staffing up FERC and getting more prepared to do all this. The one other thing I would ask about, Sean, is a lot of what's weird and unwieldy about our electricity system is the federalism of it, which is the states have jurisdiction over their energy systems and FERC only has jurisdiction over interstate electricity. And just the line between what's in a state and what counts as interstate alone is fuzzy and weird.
So how is it that you are enabling FERC, the federal agency, to directly put requirements on utilities which are supposed to be regulated by states? How are you navigating this jurisdictional issue?
Sean Casten
Well, I have the way that I'd like to resolve it. And then there's the honest reality that a lot of the things that drive — if you as a consumer are deciding whether to put a solar panel on your roof or an electric vehicle in your driveway — you're going to be making that decision based on retail rates that are entirely outside of FERC jurisdiction. And that's a real problem. Where FERC has jurisdiction is over the ISOs and RTOs, the multistate but not totally federal entities who set up the rules of the market, set up these interstate rules.
I think there's a rich legal history— that I'll defer to other lawyers than myself — that these entities have essentially created something that our founders didn't envision. Because the 10th Amendment says "All rights not expressly provided to the federal government are reserved for individuals or the states." And there are these weird multinational things. You could probably argue that RGGI in New England has a similar weird multi-state issue. But essentially, those are the places where the rules are set on interstate hooking up of the wires, sharing of resources between the regions, and the wholesale market design, which is all FERC jurisdictional.
The place that I was going to say, if you really want to — made me king. And this is for, I guess, enterprising lawyers who are listening: There's a super interesting dissent in a 2000 Supreme Court case, FERC versus New York state by a young jurist named Clarence Thomas, who observes in his dissent that there is absolutely no physical way to guarantee that an electron injected onto the grid stays within the boundaries of a state. And therefore, it's not clear why all power sales should not be federally jurisdictional.
David Roberts
Indeed!
Sean Casten
I don't often agree with Clarence Thomas, but when I do, it's on matters of federalism and electricity policy. So, like, I think that's a longer conversation. We're not going to address that in a piece of legislation. But I do think if there's a smart, I don't know, charitable FERC lawyer listening to your pod prepare your Supreme Court litigation strategy on that one.
David Roberts
The one other thing I wanted to mention about FERC, I feel obliged to mention this, since I've done a couple of previous podcasts on it, is it also instructs FERC to force utilities to consider grid-enhancing technologies, this set of technologies that would allow more throughput from the existing grid, basically.
Sean Casten
Yeah. And by the way, these are both like technologies, like things you would put on a wire, that let you put more on the wire — computer algorithms to say, like, "Let's dynamically rate the wire; that on a hot day it can carry less power than on a cold day," and so let's adjust. Also end-use efficiency: it's insane that the cheapest — not to be all Amory Lovins on you — but the cheapest form of new load is usually somebody who can agree to turn the air conditioner down on a hot day, and yet that can't participate in power markets.
So, yes, we've got the deployment of these grid-enhancing technologies, including end-use efficiency. We've also got a provision to strengthen existing FERC order 2222, which created markets for demand side load participation. And a number of states, under pressure from their utilities, have opted out. And so this would basically say that states can't opt out of those programs: this is a federal law, you have to comply with it. And even if your utility would much rather that your power bills were higher. You still get to deploy things that can save you money.
David Roberts
Yeah. Final footnote on that is included in the grid-enhancing technologies portion of the bill is a mention of reconductoring, which Volts fans will recall from just a week or two ago — a real dark horse solution. Just bigger, better power lines in the place of the existing ones.
Sean Casten
Always love it when you dumb it down, David.
David Roberts
Reconductoring, it just trips right off the tongue. I can't believe it wasn't in the headline of your bill.
Mike Levin
Dave, we have a company right in Southern California ready to reconductor everything.
David Roberts
Sweet.
Mike Levin
I can give them a shameless plug later.
David Roberts
Sweet. Okay, final question about transmission. Sean, it's a more general question, which is — And I'll have a related question for you in a minute, Mike — which is by centralizing a lot more authority in the federal government, do you worry at all about what this would look like in the hands of a Trump FERC? In the hands of a Trump government, would you be empowering the federal government to stop things that good states want to do? You know what I mean? Do you worry about that at all?
Sean Casten
I do have worries about a specific politician, but it's not Trump. FERC is an independent agency. FERC, by statute, has a five-member set of commissioners. Those commissioners have to be no more than three from one political party. And part of the reason why FERC historically has been as effective as they have is because they are largely outside of the political process. So even if a Trump, or someone even worse, suddenly had two vacancies; this isn't like the Supreme Court, where you can jam it with idiots.
David Roberts
Half idiots at worst.
Sean Casten
Yeah, like, right now there's two vacancies, and one of those vacancies — Biden nominates them, but one of those has to come from Republican leadership in the Senate to say, "This is someone we vet." My bigger problem is that the head of the Senate ENR committee, who's a close friend of yours, David — senator from West Virginia — has effectively blocked the Biden administration's ability to staff FERC. So we are now at three FERC commissioners out of five. We don't have names on there. Glick got bunted out. And I do have a fear that existing FERC commissioners are looking over their shoulder politically.
"If I want this job again, do I need to be careful that I don't do something that might piss off the senator from West Virginia?" And that's how you break an organization that is designed to be independent.
David Roberts
Senator Voldemort.
Sean Casten
I think the Senate's slow walk on this, and frankly, the White House not being more forceful, has, I think, weakened FERC in ways across all presidencies that we need to fix and fix that yesterday.
David Roberts
Interesting. Interesting. All right. So that's the transmission part. And would — this is sort of a temperature taking thing — but would you say, like, transmission was a somewhat obscure issue not very long ago, and at least in my world, in my world, it has become an intense, top-level preoccupation. What's your sort of temperature on the Democratic caucus overall? Has the transmission gospel reached the hearts and minds of the Democratic coalition sufficiently?
Sean Casten
I think I'm very proud of the fact that we were able to pull this together and get the endorsement of the progressive caucus, the new Dems, the SEEC, and a lot of committee chairs, and that this has become kind of the Democratic vehicle.
David Roberts
Right.
Sean Casten
It's also, for better or for worse, highlighted that the Republican permitting bill this term, H.R. 2, is entirely about oil and gas and has nothing about transmission in it. Had the Republicans brought forward the "compromised" bill at Manchin, they probably could have got it through because that actually had transmission and oil gas pieced in it.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Sean Casten
And so essentially it's become partisan. But I think it's more a conflict between, "are you advocating for the interests of energy producers or energy consumers?" Because if you're a producer, you want more oil and gas exports because that's how the producers are making money. And so you push for that line. If you're a consumer, you want access to cheap energy, which is increasingly renewable electric. And there are Republicans, like the entire Iowa Republican delegation is sitting on a glut of wind that they would love to get into more expensive markets. They should be very logical advocates.
But the leadership of the Republican Party; two of them are from Louisiana.
Mike Levin
For now, anyway.
Sean Casten
The guy they just kicked out was from Bakersfield, the oil patch in California. And so the leadership of the Republican Party is very much looking out for that small minority of communities in America that depend on gas jobs. So it's become a Republican democratic issue. But I think the much harder debate is really "What do you do for communities that have historically depended on fossil fuel production in this transition?" And that's a fair question. I think we've tried to be thoughtful about that, but that's candidly probably a bigger issue than we're going to address just in this bill.
David Roberts
Right. I said that was the last one, but one more. And if you don't think this is productive, feel free to just tell me to bug off. But what do you think about, do you think that Democrats made a mistake by not accepting the Manchin permitting compromise package toward the end of last session? There's a lot of debate about this in my circles.
Sean Casten
I'm really not sure how serious a package that it — I mean, I don't know that it had votes in the Senate. Like we could talk about "would it have gotten there?" I was having conversations with a number of my Senate colleagues, at the time that was going through, that the pacing vote on that bill was never Joe Manchin. It was Bernie Sanders.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Sean Casten
Right. Because you knew, and we've seen it this term as well, that the only way you actually get bills through is to have virtually all Democrats on board and a minority of the Republicans. And as soon as you start framing bills as saying, well, we're going to alienate the left of the Democratic party with the hope that there are a dozen magical Republicans who will put bipartisanship above party. Those people don't exist. And I think there's a theory in the Senate that those exist. But look, we had H.R. 1, our campaign finance reform, get rid of gerrymandering, undo Citizens United.
The Senate went through, debated that whole bill. Among the things they changed was got rid of public financing of elections for senators with the hope that would actually get more Senate votes. And at the end of the day, they got exactly zero Republicans to sign on, which was exactly what we had before they weakened the bill.
David Roberts
Yes. And so we just weaken things and weaken things and weaken things in pursuit of this mythological dozen Republicans, and then all you're left with is weak sauce.
Sean Casten
Yeah. And you're left saying, like, well, were the Democrats to blame for not accepting this? It's like, well, you weren't including the people who actually were committed to governance. And yes, there will be trade-offs within that group, but we passed a lot of stuff, the Inflation Reduction Act that got every Democrat on board from AOC to Joe Manchin, but it didn't get anybody else.
David Roberts
Yeah, Senator Manchin seems to have a quasi-religious belief in that group of Republicans that are just right on the verge of crossing over just for one more concession. And they're like, Bigfoot. You get blurry snapshots, but none of them ever show up. Anyway, we'll move on. Representative Levin, I want to talk to you about the community engagement stuff, but briefly, let's touch on, before that, title four, which is about public land and renewables. Maybe just tell us briefly, like, what's the goal there? What's the idea? What are you trying to do?
Mike Levin
Well, I think we had a pretty bold objective a number of years ago in the Natural Resources Committee — I'm proud to serve on that committee — to have 25 gigawatts of new renewables on our public lands by 2025. And obviously, that's a very bold and ambitious goal. But I think we've got to put the framework in place to make it as easy as possible for us to even come close to those goals. And it's sad that it's become so controversial to have just fair deployment of renewable energy on public lands. We know that we absolutely need to reduce our emissions at the scale that we need, and they're some of the best areas anywhere in the country for renewable energy generation.
So we've got to have balance, obviously; there's other important roles our public lands play both the environmental role, the recreational. But we want to make sure that our renewable development on public lands be done with what we call a "smart from the start" approach to encourage careful planning and balance renewable potential with conservation and with recreation. And I've actually been working on a bill, bipartisan bill, for a number of years in Natural Resources called PLREDA (Public Lands Renewable Energy Development Act), to incentivize a lot of this. And ultimately, I'm hopeful that these are provisions in the bill that are not as controversial, but also mindful that we've got very powerful forces against us.
It was, I think, back in December or January where you had a podcast with folks going over some history of the influence of the fossil fuel industry on energy policy, particularly since Citizens United — just the massive amount of dark money that has flowed in from the fossil fuel lobby. But I think in that pod, the folks from the renewable energy side, they're in the third decade of existence, or the fourth decade of existence, as opposed to fossil, where they've been around much longer. And I think the folks at that pod said that you need around seven decades in existence before you finally understand the machinations of the political process. Well, you add Citizens United to the mix and it makes things tough, but we just have to keep at it.
I think the outcome that we cannot accept is to just allow the fossil fuel lobby to write permitting reform. And whether it's public lands, community engagement, you name it, we've got to have a strong democratic alternative to that.
David Roberts
Was this a weird bad dream I had, or at one point, I feel like the permitting deal that was on the table — around the time of Build Back Better — there was a provision in there that said: for every lease you offer a solar farm, you have to offer an oil and gas lease alongside it. Like, they're literally tying oil and gas leases to renewable energy leases. I thought that was like —
Sean Casten
I think that's in the offshore wind provisions now — as we roll out offshore wind leases, they are paced by that right now because of those rules. It's crazy.
David Roberts
Good grief. That's just, like, ridiculous. Anyway, okay, lots more renewables on public land. That's great. So let's talk then about community engagement. So, as you are no doubt aware, this portion of the bill caused quite a bit of agita and controversy in my circles, and just to frame it for listeners. So there's this looming problem that we need to build a lot of stuff between now and 2050 if we want to hit our carbon targets. We're just going to have to build, build at a rate that is unprecedented, I think certainly for renewable energy and nearly without precedent — I think almost anywhere.
And that means solar and wind everywhere. It means probably some nuclear plants, geothermal, your transmission, and just all of this build, build, build. And right now, what we have is a system that has accrued over time, lots and lots and lots of mechanisms whereby people can stop that building from happening. There are all these veto points, all these laws that enable people to sue and force reviews and force more reviews and more reviews. And just the threat of all that stuff has intimidated a lot of developers out of even trying. So right now, things are very slow to build and very expensive.
That's true at the city level with housing, that's true at the national level with renewable energy. It's true almost anything — except for LNG export terminals, we seem to be able to just pop those up like nobody's business. But everything else, it's very difficult to build. And so there's this whole sort of movement on the left of an abundance progressivism, a progressivism of building. And so a lot of what those people want is to sort of rethink and sweep away a lot of these mechanisms whereby people were stopping bad stuff. Like that's why all this stuff came into being.
There were mechanisms for citizens trying to stop bad, often fossil fuel stuff, happening. And what it looks like to those people is that the community engagement provisions of this bill move in the opposite direction. It looks like they give communities more tools to stop things. And so I think the critique that's floating around out there is you have all these transmission titles meant to accelerate transmission building, and then this community engagement title that looks like it would give people a bunch of new tools through which to stop transmission and everything else. Through endless sort of NEPA reviews, the National Environmental Protection Act reviews, on and on.
So maybe before we get into the specifics, I'd like your thoughts about that general line of critique.
Mike Levin
Well, David, I will say this as a recovering environmental attorney who used to try to work with communities ahead of time and try to avoid lawsuits and try to build things that ultimately I agree with build, build, build. But we have to build the right way. We have to make sure that we're reducing our emissions. We have to make sure that we're actually keeping environmental justice communities in mind. And historically, those communities have really not had the chance or the expertise to even participate in the decision-making process effectively. So I think what we are trying to do here is to prevent the further entrenchment of what's happened in the past with some of these communities by actually giving them a seat at the table.
And I'd be remiss not to acknowledge that lawsuits slow things down. But I do think that we're seeing some of this change. You had a great guest on from Australia a couple of months ago that spoke about some of the new ideas around community engagement and how when you're working upfront, working through disagreements, trying to engage with impacted community members and chart a path forward upfront, rather than just dictating projects top-down or forcing them on communities who don't want them or receive any benefits from them and expecting them to just go along, that you can actually get things done more quickly, not less. That being said, I did have an opportunity — after the bill I was flattered to see some of the commentary out there, and I actually think it's very helpful to have the discussion.
I saw one piece by Professor Elmendorf from — I believe he's from UC Davis — and he had some good ideas to improve the bill. And he said the law needs to distinguish between "Projects that present serious, demonstrable health risks and projects that may offend someone's aesthetic sensibilities or trigger unwarranted fears, but pose no real risk of injury." I think that's a valid point. I think that's a valid point. But let's not cut our nose to spite our face.
And let's remember that fossil fuel interests here are largely to blame. They're pumping money into these local fights. I thought that your guest from Australia was spot on. We've got to turn the tide back in the other direction. The key way we do that is to make sure that developers are doing what's necessary to build local support. And the last thing I'll say there was a very good survey that came out of Lawrence Berkeley National Lab of large-scale wind and solar developers, came out in January, and it said that community opposition is one of the top three leading causes of project cancellations.
The other two are local ordinances and grid interconnection. But it said that 75% of the developers surveyed believed that increased engagement resulted in fewer project cancellations. And a lot of them indicated that they expected earlier engagement would have been a good idea even for the most recently canceled projects that they worked on. And even the Chamber of Commerce and others have said this in hearings and other public forums. So I think there is some common ground that we can find here to make sure that we do this the right way, that we build, build, build but that we do it the right way.
David Roberts
Yeah, I guess the whole premise of this section in this general field is this idea that doing more and better community engagement earlier in the process, even though it looks like more time-consuming, you're actually going to save time net-net by averting bigger fights down the road. That's the theory, but you know, as Chris points out in the article you cite, that is mostly at this point a theroy — mostly at this point a nice idea. And there's a real dearth of scientific study of this, like double-blind trials or things that might actually demonstrate that that's true. So at the very least, it's a gamble. It's a hope.
Mike Levin
I'll take his point: it is an untested theory. But what's absolutely certain is that the way energy infrastructure historically has been built has completely undermined environmental justice communities and their ability to participate in the decision-making process effectively. And if people are comfortable with that as we move forward, that's simply not something that I think is in line with my values. I don't think it's in line with the vast majority of those communities. And look, a lot of them are very skeptical because they've been burned by the fossil fuel industry. Simply they look at rural communities and you've got new energy companies showing up saying they're going to extract benefits from their land.
And you've got folks all over this country that have experienced increased rates of adverse health effects, asthma, cancer, you name it, and so I get it. I get the skepticism. But what we know is that clean energy projects are less harmful to the environment, they're less harmful to public health than fossil projects, and not to mention the job creation potential for these communities that I think can help bolster rural economies. So I think a lot of upfront discussion is important. It's essential for all these projects. And the absolute certainty is that we cannot keep doing things the way we've been doing and expect a different result.
And that means that environmental justice communities get the shaft.
Sean Casten
Can I just add a couple of numbers here also that I think there's a — I don't want to put words in Mike's mouth, but I think we're both rabid YIMBYs with a Y. But I think we need to be careful not to assume that things that people are familiar with in their everyday life with respect to housing, or how hard it is to rezone a shopping mall into affordable housing, whatever else applies in the energy space. Because over the last decade, you have to explain to me how it is that somehow community engagement is making it harder to build fossil assets. When we've seen US gas production go up by 70%, US demand go up by 30%, and exports go up by 500%. We have become a — almost 25% of the gas we now produce in the US is for export, and the facilities that are already permitted are going to double that again.
So it's not obvious that somehow these gosh darned environmental justice communities are frustrating our ability to build dirty gas assets. On the other hand, there's 2000 gigawatts of generations stuck in interconnect queues that can't get through right now, of which 1 gigawatt is coal, 85 gigawatts are gas and all of the rest are clean energy projects. So to argue that the problem is that we have too much local community engagement when the practical outcome in the energy space is that we've made it very easy to build dirty things and very hard to build clean things, I'm not sure that really washes, right.
And meanwhile, the single best thing we could do for that community that's sitting there next to a coal plant is shut down the coal plant and give them cheaper, cleaner energy that can pipe in from somewhere else. Right?
David Roberts
Yes, I mean, I think what everybody would like is a process that allows good faith objections to be heard and addressed in a fair way, but that does not empower and enable bad faith objections to grind everything to a halt. And it just turns out, I think just to give legislators a bit of a break on this, it's not obvious how to write into law a process that distinguishes good faith from bad faith objections, right.
Sean Casten
I don't know how to legislate good behaviour. I remember Jamie Raskin telling me when we were talking about all the Electoral Reform act, he said, "You know, at the end of the day, a constitutional democracy is based on the good faith of human beings all the way down." You can write whatever law you want, but the law is going to be carried out by an individual who's going to decide which laws to prosecute, which ones not to prosecute, how to enforce, how to interpret. And you do your best with who you have, but you try to get the intent right in the bill, and then you're going to have fallible mortals interpreting these laws.
David Roberts
Yeah, well, let me ask about some specifics, then. So one of the things that it would do is expand the definition of environmental effects in NEPA to include economic and social effects. You know, to Chris's eye, and I think somewhat to mine, this looks to me like an invitation for more people with more grievances to enter the process. At least environmental effects to some extent can be measured and quantified. But once you get into social effects, then you're on very fuzzy ground, and almost anyone can speak up. And one of the things I think about — to touch on our theme — it's fine if we imagine this as a process of negotiation between good faith developers and good faith environmental justice communities figuring out a good faith response.
But again, what if Trump takes over and this becomes just an excuse for local communities to block any clean energy infrastructure? Like, it seems to give a lot broader ambit to objectors in a way that is inevitably going to draw more objections. Do you not agree?
Mike Levin
So, David, I think that is a valid concern, and I think it is really important. Back to your earlier point about Trump-proofing the bill. I think that we do appreciate the help from interested parties to help us do that. I think after seeing how the Trump administration acted previously, I think we have a far better understanding of the playbook. And I think we have to make sure that the ideas that we're promoting here can't be weaponized. And I think our teams are doing what they can to go through the bill with a fine-tooth comb to think through all the eventualities that might occur.
But I absolutely think we need and welcome the help to make sure we don't miss anything. It's too important to leave up to chance. But I do — think big picture here: there is a characterization that somehow these provisions would be weaponized to subsidize objections to clean energy projects. And I don't see that to be the case. I think a lot of the communities that have long shouldered pollution, the cancer, the asthma, all the other problems with fossil fuels are also exactly the communities who are under-resourced. They don't have recourse to deal with energy projects writ large.
And at the same time, I think our teams have heard from developers, renewable energy project developers, about how it would actually be helpful for community groups to have some funding so that they could engage more effectively instead of just throwing up roadblocks.
David Roberts
Right. Let's talk about that part, because that's one of the parts that kind of made a lot of heads blow off, is there's actually a provision in here that would give federal money to local government and civic groups and tribes in order for them to intervene in NEPA cases. And to a lot of people, that just seemed like, "Well, not only are you inviting more objection and more process, but you're literally funding more objection and more process." And this, I think, is a real schism of understanding between the build, build, build crowd and the environmental justice crowd.
How do you think about — "intervener compensation" is the term of art for this?
Mike Levin
Yeah, look, I think that we have to have a dialogue on this. And again, remember that things as they are today are not working for environmental justice communities. By and large, the history of burdens have been disproportionately shouldered by those with the fewest resources. And I think you talked about tribal governments. That's a great example of folks that have a legal obligation but lack the capacity to engage at the level of detail necessary with these mega-projects. And look, this is a competitive grant program. It can go to states, it can go to local governments, it can go to tribes, it can go to nonprofits.
And enhancing community engagement opportunities, as the bill defines it, is only one eligible use case for these grants. They can also be used for increasing capacities to run the analysis needed by local or state government. They can be used to identify zones for renewable development. They can be used to facilitate the siting of renewable energy infrastructure or for training or hiring more personnel to facilitate these objectives. But I will tell you that I think anybody who's been involved at all with any sort of energy project development in California can attest to intervener compensation being a positive thing.
These are extraordinarily complex and difficult entities to navigate, and I think it's a major financial burden for the public to engage in proceedings. So I think we need public participation, and I think that as part of this work to support public engagement and in order to provide communities on equal footing with well-resourced industry stakeholders, intervener compensation can help achieve that.
Sean Casten
It's also important to note here that it is not a level playing field right now.
David Roberts
Yeah.
Sean Casten
Particularly if you're a rate-regulated utility, your costs of intervening are paid by your customers.
David Roberts
I know, I know.
Sean Casten
And frankly, so are your political donations. So you can get a friendly utility commissioner appointed to oversee the case and you can then pay. And then meanwhile you've got a local community saying, "Well, can I get a few bucks?" And people are saying, "Well, you're not really very deserving, are you? I'm not sure you're as sophisticated as the people who are at the table." And that's not to say that, yes, you have to have some checks on this. You can't just, can't just be like an open pot of money for anybody who comes in and gets it.
But this is about leveling the playing field, not tipping it to fill it full of people. I mean, the average community that doesn't want a project developed has other things they'd like to do with their time than go down to the local — fly to DC for a FERC hearing.
Mike Levin
And notwithstanding the thoughtful Atlantic piece that we mentioned before, the people that don't like this bill are the fossil fuel industry and they don't like it because frankly, they're the ones benefiting from the status quo. And for me, that's the biggest tell of all.
David Roberts
Yeah. And I will say as a bit of a FERC watcher, over the years, this issue of FERC will open a proceeding to make a decision. And it takes comment from anyone and everyone. But actually doing the research and finding someone to assemble a professional looking comment to make your opinion known to FERC is not cheap, it's not easy. And so this has, as Sean says, it has sort of distorted FERC proceedings in that the sort of wealthy incumbents can afford to intervene their heads off. And it's not that easy for the affected groups. So this idea of FERC intervener compensation has been around for a long time before this current argument about build, build, build and all this, the need for FERC to be able to hear from a wider array of voices, I think has been around a while and has somewhat got swept up in this recent argument unjustly.
So, let's talk about our vision for the future here. We've laid down a marker: we want to centralize authority over transmission with FERC. We want FERC to have some backstop authority. We want FERC to force utilities to do things that utilities should have been doing all along to make them actually do those things, get a lot more transmission going. And ideally, the vision, I think, is all these new projects that we're build, build, building will begin early on with community engagement, settle those issues, figure out where to put things, figure out how to compensate communities for the impacts and make that whole process smoother — I think the aspiration is the idea, whether the details in here would necessarily do that or not.
I think, as you say, is open to negotiations. It's going to be a long process. But what's next? You talked about being prepared for when the opportunity arises. Does that just mean waiting for some bright future day when the filibuster is gone and Dems have Congress, or are there smaller bits and pieces of opportunity that might come before then? Like, what do you sort of envision happening to this bill now that it's on paper and out there?
Mike Levin
Sean, you want to start?
Sean Casten
Yeah, I'll make just sort of a hopeful and a practical point. The hopeful is we find a vehicle. I mean, Congress has a weird way of all of a sudden you've got an opportunity and big things happen and you don't get to play in that room unless the big thing is there and has the support. And so Mike and I continue to push to get all the various stakeholders involved and engaged to support this and build that support.
David Roberts
Can I ask, we talked before about the mythical Republicans that might someday step up and do something good. As you say, there are a number of Republican states, red states, that would very tangibly and directly benefit from this bill in ways that you can demonstrate. It's not complicated. It's not a complicated argument. Iowa, you mentioned. Is that incentive? I mean, I don't want us to be fooling ourselves like Manchin here, but do you think that incentive is enough to draw a few of them out of the bunker on this?
Sean Casten
Look, it depends on the moment. I mean, last time I checked, every state benefits from cheaper insulin, but that was a very partisan vote. But I do think that in general, if you do good policy, good politics sometimes follows. The reverse is never true. So let's get the policy right and do it. But I do want to make also just the somewhat more practical point of this bill is not just Mike and I's work. There's a ton of our colleagues who had put the hard work in before and got cobbled in here, and there's a lot of pieces that could be pulled out in standalone vehicles as they go through.
David Roberts
I feel bad we didn't mention offshore wind. There's a whole title in here about inducing more offshore wind.
Sean Casten
Yeah, which was a lot of stuff that a lot of our colleagues had done that hard work before. And so we'll continue to —
David Roberts
It came from a different bill.
Sean Casten
But the other piece that's just sort of a practical reality is I've had a number of conversations with current and past FERC commissioners on this bill going through to say, "Okay, which of these pieces are expansions of FERC's current jurisdiction versus which ones of these are simply giving FERC an affirmative obligation to do something that they already have the authority to do?"
David Roberts
Right.
Sean Casten
And the vast majority of this bill is in that latter camp. And so we know this isn't just about whether Mike and I's bill gets passed and we finally get our faces chiseled on Mount Rushmore as we deserve. But how are we going to actually solve the climate crisis if we know we can't do it unless we build this stuff faster? And all I really have to assume, even in like a completely dysfunctional congress, is a president who gives a shit and a fully staffed FERC that says we give a shit, too. And we're going to do everything in our power to bring these bills.
And having thought through it of the outside groups, that's an agenda that's there. I don't want to over celebrate, but I think a lot of these ideas, if we still had a chairman Glick running a five-member FERC —
David Roberts
Yes.
Sean Casten
I think a lot of these things might have been come through. And so maybe we'll have something like that again in the future. And what I do know is that next term, there will be a different head of Senate ENR.
David Roberts
Yeah, Manchin's not running again and Biden is. So we could have a Biden, no Manchin staffed FERC situation.
Sean Casten
The political fear of aspiring FERC commissioners, maybe that changes, right?
Mike Levin
Let me add one more thing. I think there are a lot of ideas in here that Republicans should be perfectly fine with. In fact, I think they should enthusiastically support a lot of these ideas. But I see too many of our colleagues just sort of have this knee-jerk response of opposing transmission policy just because Democrats are in favor of it. And this is a fairly new thing. So transmission used to be bipartisan. 2005 Energy Policy Act; you had Congress grapple with transmission in a pretty significant way. You had a Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House.
David Roberts
Well, one of the best states for transmission is Texas.
Mike Levin
Yeah, it's funny. I had a conversation with one of my Republican colleagues. I think, Sean, you were there, and this gentleman, I won't name names, but he said the Inflation Reduction Act, you've had all these announcements of all these projects, and two thirds of the projects are going into Republican districts. How did you guys pull that off? And I said we didn't do anything. We just wrote what we thought was a good bill and a lot of folks weighed in. And ultimately the market determines where those jobs will be created. And I think the key here is getting over the mental block that transmission lines are the enemy.
They are not the enemy. And it's just getting over that knee-jerk response and just encouraging our colleagues to exercise their own independent judgment and break free from whatever the fossil fuel industry is telling them to think. And that's not easy, but we've got to keep at it.
David Roberts
Well, if we watch the immigration brew going down right now, not a ton of independent judgment being exercised anywhere. But who knows?
Mike Levin
It's terrible. And I'm honestly optimistic, David, that our constituents at the end of the day, expect more than just a bunch of nonsense and partisanship. And it is so frustrating. You know, anytime that Sean and I are in the Capitol, we walk out on the front steps after a vote series, and you've got a horde of reporters that would love nothing more for us to tear each other to shreds. And as long as that's the case, as long as performance supersedes actually getting things done, then we're going to run into this problem. But I hope that people are getting sick and tired of it. I know my constituents are.
Sean Casten
The tragedy, Mike, is that if I elbowed you in the kidneys on the way out of the House, we'd get a lot more time on television.
David Roberts
Exactly. You guys need to think, "How can we have a fake fight and then throw good transmission ideas into the fake fight?"
Mike Levin
Don't give us any ideas, Dave.
Sean Casten
Mike, we'll get Nancy Mace on the floor. She can fill us in exactly how to do that.
David Roberts
That could go wrong in all kinds of ways. All right, guys, thank you so much for coming on and walking through this. Really lots of great stuff in this bill, and I hope it comes to something in the future. But either way, thanks for coming on and walking us through it.
Sean Casten
Thanks so much for having us, David.
Mike Levin
Thank you.
David Roberts
Thank you for listening to the Volts podcast. It is ad-free, powered entirely by listeners like you. If you value conversations like this, please consider becoming a paid Volts subscriber at volts.wtf. Yes, that's volts.wtf. So that I can continue doing this work. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
The Democrats' new consensus bill would supercharge transmission