Manchin’s Project 2025 Pollution Promotion Bill

Senators Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) have come up with a permitting reform bill that fulfills so many of Project 2025’s goals for expanding the production, use and export of fossil-fuels, we may as well just call it the Project 2025 Pollution Promotion Bill. Sure, there are some provisions to boost electric transmission capacity, which is important to the renewable energy transition. But overall, the bill is a feast for the fossil-fuel industry and the clean energy crumbs just aren’t worth it. Democrats should be fighting Project 2025, not helping it along.

As EarthJustice explains, “the bill would increase oil and gas extraction on public lands, undo the Biden administration’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) pause, and facilitate the construction of more fossil fuel infrastructure that would lock us into decades of fossil fuels use. Additionally, it would reverse long-standing precedent on how mining operations are conducted on public lands and limit the ability of local communities to seek justice in the courts.”

That sounds a lot like Project 2025’s agenda, which calls for ramping up oil and gas drilling, restarting LNG exports, and building up our dependence on polluting and climate-warming fossil-fuels. Like this bill, Project 2025 lays out numerous specific policy steps for expanding fossil-fuel production and weakening environmental regulations that protect nearby and marginalized communities from harmful pollution and other impacts.

NRDC sums it up nicely: “This bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels. We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry.”

So how is Manchin selling this bill? As UtilityDive reported in May, Senator Manchin emphasized the importance of shaping a more efficient permitting process to bring more wind and solar online. That of course, is meant to appeal to Democrats who want to see more clean energy.

To be fair, the bill does actually include some provisions that would help expand transmission capacity more quickly. But the Sierra Club points out that much the same work is already being done, without promoting fossil-fuels: “While the bill includes provisions that may accelerate the deployment of clean energy and the transmission infrastructure that is needed to support it … the Biden-Harris administration has already put forward comprehensive policies to unleash clean energy, improve the resilience of the power grid, and improve affordability for consumers.” In fact, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and Department of Interior are well into work to increase transmission capacity and solar and wind development on federal lands, while Representatives Sean Casten and Mike Levin’s Clean Electricity and Transmission Acceleration (CETA) Act, “offers a real solution to address permitting issues.”

In other words, there are better alternatives already being implemented and developed that wouldn’t come at the cost of a massive giveaway to the polluters.

As LCV put it in a statement opposing the bill, “Efforts to improve the resiliency of our electricity grids and the transition to clean energy must not be paired with fossil fuel handouts that continue to damage communities and our climate.”

Members of Congress who truly want to support clean energy and tackle the climate crisis should not be fooled into supporting this bill. It does far more to expand oil and gas production than it does clean energy, and there are more effective transmission solutions already in the works.