In the March issue of Wiley journal Climate and Energy, NERA Managing Director Dr. Jeff D. Makholm examines Senator Joe Manchin’s energy reform bill, “Building America’s Energy Security Act 2022,” which aimed to accelerate the permitting of all types of American energy infrastructure to promote energy security and climate objectives without bypassing environmental laws or state and local input.

Large-scale interstate electricity transmission now looms as a necessary industrial link in promoting the rapid entry of the nation’s unevenly distributed renewable energy resources in wind and solar electricity. The essential current problem in US electricity markets is the planning, permitting, and funding of new electricity transmission to facilitate the rapid entry of renewable generation from renewable resource-rich parts of the country with small populations.

Dr. Makholm notes that Senator Manchin’s energy reform bill paves the way for the most troublesome subjects and explains how this can be developed further. Dr. Makholm explains that the bill draws upon existing laws for transportation projects (roads, highways, bridges, rail, and transit), as many advances in regulation have accompanied the transformation and deregulation of the US transport sector. Dr. Makholm argues that the bill gives the President the authority to identify a list of strategically important energy and mineral projects and such projects receive priority federal review.

Makholm, Jeff D. (March, 2023). “Senator Joe Manchin’s Useful, but Settled, Interstate Energy Permitting Reform,” Climate and Energy, 39/8, ©2023 Wiley Periodicals, Inc., a Wiley Company.