- The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (S.5653) would impose firm deadlines on federal environmental reviews and cap legal challenges at 150 days.
- The bill has drawn endorsements from an extraordinary coalition: the American Petroleum Institute, the American Clean Power Association, LIUNA, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and 21 governors.
- Data centres would be required to pay the full cost of their own transmission upgrades instead of shifting those costs onto households and small businesses.
A permitting reform bill 2026 introduced in the U.S. Senate has achieved something almost unheard of in Washington: it has united the American Petroleum Institute, the clean-energy industry, and the country’s largest building-trades unions behind a single piece of energy legislation. The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 (S.5653), sponsored by Sens. Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Mike Lee (R-UT), and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), would impose firm timelines on federal environmental reviews, limit lawsuits against approved projects to a 150-day window, and give federal regulators stronger authority to site the interstate transmission lines the grid needs.
The coalition behind the bill, rolled out on October 7–8, reads like a roster of interests that almost never agree. Alongside Big Oil and clean-energy trade groups, endorsers include the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA), the United Association of plumbers and pipefitters, the International Union of Operating Engineers, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable, the National Governors Association, Citizens’ Climate Lobby, the Club for Growth, and 21 governors in a joint statement, according to Senator Martin Heinrich’s press release.
A coalition that almost never happens
Permitting reform has been the graveyard of energy legislation for a decade. Every recent attempt has collapsed on the same fault line: oil and gas interests want faster approvals for pipelines and drilling, while clean-energy advocates want the same speed for transmission lines and renewables, and each side has treated the other’s wish list as poison. What makes the American Affordability and Jobs Act different is that both wish lists are in it.
The trade unions are blunt about why they signed on. “It is time to stop making permitting reform the Groundhog Day of Congress,” said Brent Booker, General President of LIUNA, whose members build both pipelines and transmission lines. From the fossil-fuel side, Mike Sommers, president and CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, said: “The bipartisan package would modernize NEPA, reduce duplicative reviews and unnecessary litigation, and provide greater certainty for critical projects.” And the policy world sees a rare substantive breakthrough. “This bill would fix our permitting processes so that we can review and build efficiently, reducing costs, improving quality of life, growing our economy,” said Xan Fishman, vice president of energy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
What the bill would actually change
Beyond the headline deadlines, the bill’s provisions read like a point-by-point answer to the bottlenecks energy developers complain about most. It would prevent future administrations from arbitrarily blocking entire classes of already-permitted energy projects: a direct response to the whiplash developers have faced when executive orders reverse years of approvals overnight. It would strengthen the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s authority to site interstate transmission lines that cross state boundaries, where a single holdout state can currently stall a project for years.
The bill also expands interregional grid planning and cost-sharing, requires grid-enhancing technologies and virtual-power-plant market access, and tackles one of the most politically charged issues of the moment: who pays for the grid upgrades that serve AI data centres. Under the bill, data centres would pay the full cost of their own transmission upgrades rather than having those costs shifted onto residential and small-business ratepayers, a protection aimed squarely at households watching their electricity bills climb.
“Limited grid capacity has limited renewable energy deployment in the US and many countries. The US has been slow to expand capacity. I think the interregional planning and cost allocation policies that are in the BAAJA permitting reform bill in Congress would have a very big impact.”
— Rob Gramlich, Founder and President, Grid Strategies LLC, in correspondence with Joule Post
That cost-shift fight is already live. FERC has had to step in to suspend PJM’s emergency procurement auction for data-centre power, and it separately rejected a proposal that would have let large data-centre loads dodge curtailment obligations: a sign of how sharply the AI building boom is straining the grid. See our coverage of FERC’s rejection of the data-centre curtailment carve-out. The bill would write the principle behind those interventions into statute.
Why the 150-day clock matters: 4.5-year reviews vs a 2035 deadline
| Measure | Status quo | Under the bill |
|---|---|---|
| Federal Environmental Impact Statement | Averages ~4.5 years (review alone) | Firm statutory deadlines |
| Litigation against approved projects | Open-ended, can add years | 150-day window |
| Major interstate line, conception to energisation | 10+ years routinely | FERC siting authority to break the single-holdout-state stall |
| New within-region transmission needed by 2035 | ~54,500 GW-miles, a 64% expansion, plus ~125 GW of interregional transfer capacity | |
| US electricity demand growth by 2050 | Nearly 60% (Climate Leadership Council) | |
The most striking thing about this bill is not the coalition behind it but the arithmetic it is up against. A full federal Environmental Impact Statement has historically averaged roughly four and a half years, according to White House Council on Environmental Quality data, and that is only the review itself, before litigation, which can add years more. The bill would replace that open-ended timetable with firm deadlines and a 150-day litigation window, potentially compressing a half-decade of process into a few years.
Set that timetable against what the grid actually needs and the mismatch becomes stark. The U.S. Department of Energy’s National Transmission Needs Study found the country will need roughly 54,500 GW-miles of new within-region transmission by 2035, a 64% expansion of today’s system, plus nearly 125 GW of additional interregional transfer capacity, under scenarios the study calls the most likely power-sector future. Major interstate transmission lines routinely take a decade or more from conception to energisation under current permitting. That means the country has about nine years to build, under a 2035 deadline, infrastructure that historically takes ten-plus years to permit and construct. The bill’s FERC-siting provisions, aimed at the single-holdout-state problem, are the only mechanism in the package that directly attacks that timeline, which is why transmission advocates treat them as the bill’s most consequential section.
That compression is not an abstract policy prize. The Climate Leadership Council projects U.S. electricity demand will grow nearly 60 percent by 2050, a figure cited in Heinrich’s release. The United States is trying to electrify transport, heat, and an AI data-centre fleet that is doubling its appetite every few years: on a transmission grid whose permitting machinery was built for an era when demand barely moved. Closing that mismatch is what the bill is for.
Clean-energy developers know the cost of the status quo firsthand. Projects can spend years in permitting limbo: one Arizona solar-plus-storage plant took 16 years to reach construction, while capital sits idle and technology prices move against them. For permitting reform clean energy transmission advocates, the bill’s FERC-siting provisions are the prize. Roughly speaking, the country’s best wind and solar resources sit in the interior, while the demand sits on the coasts, and the lines connecting the two are the hardest infrastructure in America to build.
Two months to the year-end adjournment
The bill’s sponsors are under no illusions about the calendar. The Electric Power Supply Association, which represents competitive power suppliers, formally endorsed the bill on October 7–8 and urged passage when lawmakers return after the November 3 elections. The legislation must clear Congress before the year-end adjournment: a window of roughly two months.
Sceptics will note that every previous permitting effort died in exactly this corridor. But this coalition is structurally different: when the American Petroleum Institute, the American Clean Power Association, and the building trades are all lobbying the same members of Congress for the same bill, the usual veto points weaken. Opposition will come, as always, from environmental groups and communities that see faster permitting as weaker environmental review, and that debate will be the bill’s real test.
For now, though, the headline stands: a permitting reform bill 2026 has done what a decade of Congresses could not, putting Big Oil, clean energy, and organised labour on the same side of an energy fight. Whether the 150-day clock survives the legislative process will determine whether this is the breakthrough the coalition claims, or just another lap around the Groundhog Day loop.