Evergreen Action, the organization I lead, is supporting the Senate’s permitting bill (BAAJA). Here’s why.
Evergreen is dedicated to tackling the climate crisis and building an affordable, inclusive clean energy economy. Our primary focus has been speeding up the deployment of clean energy, because, simply put, switching our homes, buildings and vehicles to run on clean electricity rather than fossil fuels is how we avoid a worsening climate crisis. At the same time, it’s how we can avoid skyrocketing energy prices.
We’re going to have to build a lot of clean energy, fast. And we’ll need to connect it to a grid that can carry it to the major population centers where most people live.
But that’s not what’s happening right now. 2025 was a banner year for clean energy, with nearly 50 GW coming online, but that amount is much less than experts say we’ll need. And our country has built almost NONE of the long-distance transmission lines necessary to carry this power where it needs to go. At the same time, the grid we have is nearly impossible to plug into; according to Lawrence Berkley National Labs, in 2025, 85% of the projects in interconnection queues were clean energy, down from 95% in previous years due to the explosion of gas plant proposals as clean projects struggle to connect without adequate transmission buildout. Thanks to high wait times and interconnection fees, 75% of these projects were ultimately cancelled.
Furthermore, monopoly investor-owned utilities have shackled their customers to expensive and volatile gas and coal power plants, rather than using cheaper clean energy, and standing in the way of the interregional transmission that would threaten their profits.
To make things worse, data centers are demanding an unprecedented amount of power. Our patchy, aging and inefficient grid has been slow to provide it, so many of these data centers are now pursuing dirty “behind the meter gas.”. This reality facing communities around the country is not only horrible for the planet but incredibly harmful for adjacent communities and the air they need to breathe – a status quo that could get significantly worse if improvements to our grid aren’t made.
This bill would take steps to address all of these problems and build a cleaner, cheaper, more reliable power system. Specifically the bill would deliver:
- More Interregional Transmission: The bill would make it much easier for interregional transmission lines to be planned, permitted and financed. Right now, a transmission line that crosses multiple states needs to secure a permit from each of those states – allowing each their own veto over a project, regardless of its benefits. The bill would provide the federal government with the authority to approve lines found to be in the public interest. The bill would also require regional transmission organizations (RTOs, such as PJM in the east, MISO in the Midwest and great planes, SPP in the west) to conduct consistent, interregional planning for transmission. And it would allow independent developers to propose their own transmission projects – introducing competition to compel faster and cheaper construction of interregional lines. The bill would also make it clearer and easier to determine who pays for interregional transmission by establishing a standard cost allocation framework that would help us avoid the deadlock we now face where no one wants to pay for a line they perceive as being more beneficial to others. Taken together, these reforms would finally allow our nation to build the transmission infrastructure necessary to power a clean, reliable and affordable 21st century electric grid.
- A more efficient grid: The legislation would also make our current grid more efficient by requiring lower-cost advanced transmission technologies to be analyzed and used; and would exempt reconductoring lines or installing these technologies from additional environmental reviews, making efficient upgrades to our current transmission system faster, easier and cheaper. The bill would let groups of home and business-owned batteries and distributed resources sell power or energy demand reduction into wholesale electricity markets; requiring grid operators to remove rules that currently block this within 18 months. And it would make it faster and easier for new energy generation to plug into the grid by requiring the automation of interconnection studies and the standardization of connection fees.
- Utility Accountability: The bill would also enable greater federal oversight of exorbitant utility spending that is currently raising families’ electricity bills throughout the country. It would allow states to demand federal regulators investigate if utilities are proposing the construction of costly local transmission lines rather than regional or interregional lines that could deliver more low-cost clean energy. Regulators are also empowered to levy significant penalties if the utility is found to be acting counter to the public interest, including by lowering their return on equity, fines, and requiring the utility to issue refunds or rate credits to their customers.
- Data Center Accountability: The bill would also hold data centers accountable, by directing federal regulators to develop rules requiring data centers to pay not only for any necessary upgrades to the grid needed for their facilities, but also for the use of existing grid assets. This would help protect ratepayers from footing the bill for data centers’ energy needs and help ensure data centers are paying to build the better grid we all need. Rates might even decrease as data centers pay in above what they’re using.
All of these changes are essential to enable the clean energy transition we know is needed to keep energy costs down over the long haul and stave off a spiraling climate crisis. But they are not sufficient – we will need to keep fighting to ensure that clean energy projects are permitted (many of which are currently held up or blocked by local siting and permitting) and that the law is followed by regulators, states and utilities. But it gives us that chance. It provides a critical step forward — and an opportunity for us to accelerate progress currently constrained by our aging and outdated grid.
At the same time, I am clear eyed about the necessity of keeping up the fight to rein in fossil fuels. I spent more than a decade of my life directly fighting fossil fuel projects – from the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines, to oil and gas drilling in the Arctic, the Permian and Marcellus. The demands the Republicans made in exchange for the very good transmission and utility components of the bill were steep and weigh heavy on my heart. And this bill will not create a “fair market” or a “level playing field.” We will have to keep battling the deeply entrenched fossil fuel industry and the incumbency that these companies enjoy in our economy.I am committed to working with new Democratic majorities to come back and build on this bill and fix many of these giveaways while we work to unrig this system that has singularly favored billionaires while working people suffer. But, as a climate advocate, I fear that if we keep for a better deal the status quo will just deliver more pollution and a deepening climate crisis will mean more lives lost.
These changes have been too long delayed, already. Despite the monumental election, I do not believe that a better deal is around the corner. The time to act is now. We have to start building clean at scale. The planet and its most vulnerable populations can’t afford to wait.
I encourage Congress to pass and the president to sign the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.