Clean energy loves the permitting bill. Green groups hate it.

0:00Latitude media covering the new frontiers of the energy transition. Some people can't wait for the NFL draft. Some people can't wait until Apple rolls out its latest product, but for Jane Flagel, it's permitting reform. I feel I'm feeling good. I gotta say, I'm feeling I'm feeling pretty good. This is maybe more for me, my Super Bowl halftime show, you know? But we're not in the Super Bowl yet, right? We've only won the AFL championship game. And now like we're in the two weeks, like that you have to wait for the Super Bowl to start. And we're in the commentary section of like, who's gonna win? Which quarterback is more successful? Is the kicker capable of kicking for the 50 yard line? I don't know about the defense. You know what stop asking questions and just root for the team? Just hope that they don't have a power outage or the Super Bowl. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. From latitude media, this is open circuit.

1:00For years, we've been having a national conversation about how hard it is to build big things in America. For the last two decades, we've been consumed by debates over tax credits and arguments over which industries the government should back. And we've seen presidents using their power to favor or strangle energy infrastructure. But we have never been able to get to the root of the problem. A deeply broken federal permitting process that adds years to timelines and can drive up costs 30%. In at a time of immense load growth and rampant inflation, we are finally at a breaking point. So that's why it is so important that a bipartisan group of senators finally reached a deal on a bill that would streamline federal permitting. And hopefully get us to a place of sanity and reason in how we approve energy infrastructure. For builders and clean energy, it's a deal they've been anticipating for years. For many green groups, it's a deal with the devil that will overwhelmingly benefit fossil fuels. So this week, we're going to look at how permitting reform is taking shape. We're going to explore the details, the debates, the trade-offs, and the hope that we're about to get to a more rational place.

2:02Plus, how's that rate-payer protection going, Mr. Trump? Tech companies and utilities signed onto the White House's pledge with great fanfare. But it's not really surviving contact with the real world. We'll look at why a toothless pledge is, well, creating the results you'd expect. That's coming right up. Open Circuit is brought to you by Energy Hub. Energy Hub's Durham's platform gives utilities flexible capacity they can stake their grid planning on. Coordinating batteries, EVs, thermostats, and commercial and industrial sites through a single system. Utilities unlock a partner ecosystem that covers more than 90% of connected DERs in the market and integrates seamlessly into existing infrastructure. The scale is proven. More than 230 utilities across North America trust Energy Hub to manage over 3.5 gigawatts of flexible capacity. Learn more at energyhub.com. Open Circuit is supported by everyday electric. You might know them by their former name Renew Home.

3:05We are at a pivotal moment. Energy demand is growing faster than the grid was designed for. Every day, electric believes we need to start at home with savings before jumping to new expensive infrastructure. They already run the country's largest residential VPP, coordinating over 6 gigawatts of capacity, and now they're expanding partnerships with energy providers and OEMs so that products like thermostats, EVs, and batteries can help households save money and support the grid. That's home energy as it should be. Learn more at everydayelectric.com. What if you gave your climate donations the same due diligence you gave your investments? That's what Giving Green does. Giving Green researches the strategies and nonprofits best positioned to unlock the next big climate breakthrough and sends 100% of every dollar donated to the Giving Green fund directly to them. Maximize your impact per dollar, no cuts or guesswork. Make your first gift before the new year, and it will be matched up to $500. Go to GivingGreen.earth-circuit. Welcome to the show.

4:10I'm Steven Lacey. I'm the executive editor of Latitude Media. I am here this week with Jigger Shaw and Jane Flagel. Jigger is the co-managing partner of Multiplayer Hello, Sir. Hello! Are you and Jane in a battle to see who can do more podcasts over permitting reform? No. Because I would never win. I'll don't- I'll don't that one. It's my time. You can have VPPs. Oh my gosh. Yeah, always. I'm sorry. I missed your fake birthday party at Climate Week Jigger. It sounds like it was quite the time. It was pretty awesome. Yeah. It's one of those things with Climate Week where you go and then you never see any of the people you actually want to see. Yeah. And so then- He's saying that because we didn't hang out. Well, you were invited. That's true. I was in. I don't have- I think I learned about myself during this climate week is that I'm too old and I have no stamina. And I like- I don't know how anyone does this. I can't let-

5:10Me neither hand. I'm still a young chicken. Yeah, apparently. I can't do like when you're running around all day and then everyone wants to like go to happy area. Yeah. Did you see that my shoes were featured in Axios? No. What shoes? I had custom made energy empire shoes. I saw the shoes but I didn't realize they made Axios. Was that like the- Yes. The scene- I've seen somewhere column or like what were they featured? The Axios energy news letter. The Axios energy news letter. The Axios energy news letter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was the Axios energy news letter. I was the co-du at the bottom. Nice. I'll have to go look. So I can either make fun of you or compliment you to pet Naked. Well, one of our favorites is back. It's Jane Flagel. She's a senior fellow at the States Forum in the Searchlight Institute. And she has been heavily involved in and consumed by this permitting conversation. Jane, you were in Washington when the bill was unveiled meeting with lawmakers. How did you come out of those meetings feeling about this long awaited bill?

6:10Like incredibly energized and I think like sort of surprisingly optimistic. I think we were in this period where everyone was sort of like, should we release text? Should we not release text? When are we voting? Are we voting? Do we have text? Like what's happening? And I just feel like the vibe shift when the text was released was like palpable. I think there's a lot of momentum here and people really want to do the right thing. So I felt great about it. And then I took a nap. Well, there's a lot to get through. My podcast feed and Twitter feed are filled with lots of rundowns, takes and debates on the legislation. Lots of good takes from you. They're on Twitter, Jane. And I want to tackle some of those conversations. So let's just first rundown what's in the bill. It speeds up environmental review for virtually anything that needs a federal permit, energy projects, mines, pipelines, highways, et cetera. And there are hard deadlines on those reviews. So we can't extend them over many years as is the case now.

7:12And it prevents the federal government from weaponizing the federal review process. It seems to be particularly helpful to geothermal and hydro, which both face a labyrinth of permitting. It tackles the grid. Fert gets more power to push interstate power lines. It opens up regional market access to aggregated distributed resources, i.e. virtual power plants. It pushes Fert to even use AI to analyze transmission, which is interesting. So it opens up more data for transmission planning. It requires hyper scalers to report their data center energy use to the federal government. And it prevents data centers of 20 megawatts or more from cost shifting grid up to 20 megawatts. And it's important to be able to get a certain cost shifting grid up to rate payers. So I want to jump through each of these. And as you said, Jane, I think generally the reaction among folks who have supported this has been very positive. So does this bill match your hopes and expectations and work on this, Jane? I'm really not just saying this because I'm like a blind cheerleader but it exceeds them on almost every measure.

8:13I was really, really quite shocked when I saw the text, actually. And maybe at the highest level, you laid out a bunch of stuff that's in the bill, Steven. If you asked a normal person, what's in a permitting bill? I think they would probably not describe 75% of what you just outlined. It's a really ambitious bill. And also, I think we tend to assume when there's a bipartisan deal on something, it's going to be super low as common denominator. And this is not that. This is ambition on all sides, which I think is really interesting. Maybe the last thing I'll say is I kind of felt like, we sort of knew as the negotiations were evolving that there were three buckets. There was the transmission title. There was going to be stuff on traditional environmental review, litigation, et cetera. And then there was this bucket on permit certainty. But the kind of like, can all of the stuff on data centers is pretty novel, I think. And I did not imagine it would be in the bill. And then some of the technology specific stuff on everything from VPPs to Geothermal to

9:15Hydro was also a surprise to me. Happy surprise. Yeah, I think I saw someone on Twitter say that usually when you have a bipartisan bill, stuff starts coming out. You may compromise this, but for whatever reason, everybody threw everything into the banks and it just weren't. So Jigger, you interviewed Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico on your podcast Energy Empire, one of the co-sponsors of the bill. How did he characterize the balance of the bill and how it came together? Well, I think, I mean, Jane, I think summarized it wonderfully. I think we're in a situation where optimism exceeds pessimism, right? And I think that for so long, people just want to think the worst of everybody. And I get it, right? Because we sort of live in today. But in general, really, we do have this ability to do big things, right? Whether it's, you know, makeup for all of the shut-in capacity the guitar has on the

10:19straight-of-formos with our LNG exports to, you know, figuring out how to build data centers and, you know, other loads at scale here in this country, whether it's new manufacturing or EVs and that kind of stuff. And what was happening is that many different people were weaponizing what was routine processes within the federal government. It was never intended to be the case that like these things were politicized, right? It was supposed to be that all of these things were, you know, done by the book. Like you really actually figure out whether there's an environmental harm, right? And you characterize what that environmental harm is. You give people the chance to participate in an open process, right? None of those things were taken away by this bill. But once that process is done and the experts have done their work and published their findings, like it has to be settled, right? It can't be that that then gets manipulated for other purposes. And I remember you and me and, you know, Katherine Hamilton talked about this when Obama

11:22I think made the critical mistake of, you know, of taking away the permit for the XL pipeline when, you know, a lot of the fracking, you know, stuff was happening. And I think we predicted then that a lot of those things would be used against solar and wind, right? And it is exactly happening, right? And I just think that for those people who are characterizing this as eviscerating the NEPA or whatever it is, it's not. Like Senator Heinrich worked his butt off to try to, you know, maintain the spirit of what those laws were and taking away the ability to weaponize them. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Jane, I gave a brief rundown of what's in the bill. Do you have any favorite or underappreciated pieces of this legislation? Yeah. Okay, maybe just like to talk a minute about the data center stuff, which I think is, which I think has been underappreciated. Rob Meyer had a great piece on it yesterday, actually. But, you know, I think this is the bill is incredibly ambitious when it comes to this

12:22questions of how do you make sure data centers pay their fair share? And in fact, as I have been pushing, goes beyond fair share. So the way that I've been describing what the bill does to people is that if you think of the grid, like a toll road where everyone pays a toll to use the highway that's already been built, when a data center needs a new on ramp, the old rules, like the existing rules under the FPA said that it could pay for the ramp or the toll, whichever would cost more. And this bill requires that they pay for both. It's like a really big deal, actually. And so that, I think, is really important. I also think there are provisions in here that should encourage more flexibility and non-firm interconnection, which is really important. They basically get, you know, there are kind of like now non-firm services that are recognized as their own tariff category, which is a really big deal. It allows states to give large loads, queue priority in competitive open seasons, which

13:26I think is really important. That's all very good for emissions, like incredibly good for emissions and costs. And then maybe one more thing I'll say that I think is underappreciated is, and you know, look at me, not chilling for utilities, but I'll just say, like, it is true that if you look at the studies of what's driving a lot of the price increases in states, much of it is local transmission and distribution spending, right? And there's like lots of arguments about how much of that is or is not gold plating. And I think one of the things that the bill does that's interesting is establishes a federal role in overseeing local transmission and distribution spending. So a state can refer a utility to FERC if they think that the utility is spending imprudently. That's like a huge deal. Like, this is such a good bill. It's like shocking to me how good the bill is. And then of course, like, I love all of the transmission provisions, which I think most people in our community are enthusiastic about. But the data center stuff, I think, is in the local transmission distribution oversight

14:26thing, I think is particularly compelling. Yeah, Jigger, what's your read on the data center stuff? It's so you have these changes to how we revise transmission pricing policy. So data centers pay for both the embedded and incremental costs of new transmission. And then it essentially, as Jane said, creates this like federal national connect and manage policy to bring in more data center flexibility. What do you make of these pieces? So first of all, I just want to say the staff in the Senate is ridiculously talented, like just so talented. Like, I love Sanders White House and Heinrich and Capinoe and maybe Lee. But like, but in general, like they're not doing this work. It's the staff that does the work. And I just think when you think about just how particular they are on these things, whether it's individualization or VPPs or others, or exactly what the failure mechanisms are and

15:30how one might remedy these things through FERC, etc. These are things that we've been talking about for a long time around reopening the Federal Power Act, reopening some of these other things, which were considered sacri-sac. You could never reopen them. And I'm still a little bit concerned that the utilities will go through a manager's amendment to try to like try to close some of these things that we've been able to open up. But I just, the thing about the data centers that I find weird is that people are characterizing this as good for the data centers. Some of them are characterizing as it's bad for the data centers. It's neither. Like, ultimately, this is really unequivocally good for doing big things in America. Right? And people are holding the data centers accountable to paying which, by the way, was never the data centers fault. Like when you look at what was happening at Entry G. Arkansas or what's been happening in Duke's territory or other Dominion or the places, this was the utility.

16:32Taking a good faith effort by the data centers and saying, we would rather you not actually pay for all of this stuff because we don't want you to pay for them. We want a rate base. And this is giving the data center companies a mechanism by holding the utilities accountable so that when they make these offers, they can force the utilities to do what's right for the ratepayers. I just think that the complexity around which the staff understood this and put it and codified it here. The other thing I would say is, you know, I did a big podcast with Chris Shelton at AES and the Grid 2.0 task force. And the whole point of that was moving away from this firm capacity obligation to serve. Right? And that is wholeheartedly endorsed within this bill. They're basically saying that like it doesn't make any sense for the utilities to rate base this stuff for 26 hours a year of peak, right?

17:37And like we can use words like goalplating or platinum plating or whatever it is, but it's not really that. It's more that the utilities deliberately use this as a way to build more infrastructure that we don't always need. Now sometimes we do need it to be clear because we're going to double the size of the grid over the next 15 years. But sometimes we don't need it, right? And this bill provides a mechanism by which we can thoughtfully figure out whether we are in a place where we need it or whether we don't need it in its goalplating. It's also just like, yeah, so many of the arguments we've been having, you know, this should really help take care of the like, is it or is it not a goalplating argument? Do we need this investment or not? And even the requirements on like forward looking transmission planning and like, this should all help our country get out of a situation of artificial electricity scarcity, which is what is happening. And that is actually the core of the problem when it comes to prices and the reliability

18:38of the grid right now. One of the other provisions that I think people didn't spend a lot of time on is this backstop authority where, you know, for a lot of long transmission lines, right, you've got, you know, sufficient generation capacity here. You have sufficient load on the other side of the transmission line. And then you've got states that have to accommodate the transmission line through their state, right? And then they use that as a way to kill a transmission line. This provides a mechanism by which to overrule states who don't want a transmission line to go through, right? It gives them a shot clock and it like gives them a process by which they can complain. They can reroute the transmission line. They can do the things that they need to do, but they can't do it in a way that actually prevents the project from being built. And this is something that we've been arguing over since the 2005 and 2007 energy policy acts have passed. And so like, it was fantastic to see that methodology in here and expect that to be one of the

19:40biggest things that the utilities fight. And maybe just, sorry, I just one thing on Jigger's point about like how amazing the staff is. I also just want to say like one of the sources of opposition or pushback I hear right now from Democrats is like, let's wait till after the elections so we can negotiate a better deal. Steven's looking at me like he was going to ask this later. That's damn it, James. Just let me ask you the question. Keep rolling. I'll just say, let me just say like that you cannot say enough about how incredible these negotiators have been and Heinrich and White House in particular and their teams. And then notion that like there are going to be major substantive or negotiated improvements with other people, I think is quite frankly like facially ridiculous, but I will stop there so the Steven can tee it up later. You brought us perfectly into the questions and criticisms that we're hearing on the left. So this is a good time to address some of those. A couple of reactions to those who oppose it again, like you said, some are saying, why

20:45don't we just wait to get a better deal after the midterms when the Democrats could maybe take both houses of Congress, get a better deal. Many environmental groups are staunchly opposed saying that anything that speeds up fossil fuel permitting makes the whole deal a disaster. So Jane, how would you characterize the left's opposition right now? I think there's this argument about like an imagined counterfactual world where we might be able to get more stuff. So that's like one thing. So let's put that aside. I think the other is genuine anxiety about the, I actually think no one is really fighting about the relative ambition of the transmission title, which I think everyone has been correctly positively surprised about. I think the truth is that there have been groups who have been using the tools that Jigger elaborated to block fossil infrastructure. And there's a lot of anxiety about a bill that constrains some of the, particularly the

21:50judicial review processes around these laws. Now I should say, there are not changes. There are not big substantive changes to the clean air actor, the clean water act in this bill. I mean, there are changes to the clean water act, but they're more procedural in nature. Like everyone is still going to have to obey the, the letter of substantive environmental laws. But I think what makes people nervous is deadlines for litigation. And now if you sue a project for something that was wrong in their neapoprocess or some error, it will be much harder to do that. To stop the project forever. Like what's going to happen now is that the project will get remanded back to the agencies who have an opportunity to fix the issue at hand. So like at some level at the very heart of this is just this disagreement about whether the primary strategy that the environmental movement should be pursuing in light of climate change right now is stopping fossil or enabling clean. And the third criticism I've seen to put it crudely from one commentator, what's to stop

22:54the administration from just wiping their ass with this, right? Like, are they really going to follow it in the first place? And so I've seen some scum. This I also have very low tolerance for because, because, and it's also, this especially comes up in the like the permitting certainty discussions. And again, I just think it's really important to be honest about the counterfactual here, which is that he is wiping his ass with like it already did. It is bad. Like what is currently happening is bad. The notion that legislating constraints is somehow going to make it worse makes no sense to me. Yeah, this is, I actually don't even understand it logically as an argument, frankly. Jiggar, how do you read the critiques and criticisms? Well, first, do you forever ruin my day while thinking about Trump's ass? So like, you know, let's stop doing that. Look, I think when you think about some of the pushbacks, like I want to make sure that we're acknowledging them a little bit, right? One is that when we did the 2015 compromise on oil exports, I mean, it really did increase

23:59the amount of investment in the fossil fuel industry, right? And so, and, you know, I think that's a good thing. Like I don't think that we should have wanted gasoline to be at $5 a gallon or diesel to be at $7 a gallon. So like I think that in general, we need to provide affordable solutions to Americans. So like I think it's fine, but like I can see why environmental groups think that these kind of things are going to increase the amount of fossil fuel production, right? I think the second, the second piece of it though for them is that, is that you have this ability to issue permits that cannot be revoked, right? And so if the EPA issues many, many, many, many permits for natural gas power plants, for coal power plants, for whatever, you could imagine there being a trading mechanism in the future of those permits that were issued under the Trump administration being not able to be revoked and just constantly like sold in the marketplace between parties that want

25:00to like, you know, pollute more in the future, right? And so I think that there is some like, you know, concern over the way in which that was structured. But look, I think that the bottom line with the environmental groups and these are all friends of mine that I've talked to over the last 24 hours is that when we had the first Earth Day, 10% of the entirety of the United States of America came out for the first Earth Day. It is unclear whether 10% of the American public today would come out for any issue on the environmental side of the ledger, right? And so this esoteric blocking of projects using NEPA or using, you know, these sort of environmental rules is not actually causing them to have real American support for their positions. And a lot of what I've been counseling my friends on is to say, you need to get back to a place where 10% of Americans actually believe your point of view.

26:00And so whether that means you have to soften your point of view, whether that means you have to explain it to them more carefully, you can't just win an esoteric like court decisions like the Center for Biological Diversity does or some of these other people do. But you actually have to like win them over to your side. And you know, and that I think is the next phase of what this bill does. As it tells the environmental groups, go shore up American support for your positions. Utilities don't just hope flexible capacity performs. They need to be able to stake grid planning on it day in, day out. EnergyHub's Durham's platform is trained on over a decade of real event data from 2.6 million connected DERs. That means utilities can forecast available capacity with accuracy, optimize dispatch across any DER type or ownership model, and maintain visibility across their entire system. The platform integrates across more than 80 OEM and aggregator partners, giving utilities

27:03the reach they need as markets and regulations change. Consistent, verifiable, affordable. The Hub is the flexibility platform for the modern grid. Learn more at energyHub.com. Open Circuit is brought to you by Everyday Electric. You might know them by their former name Renew Home. After years proving the market was ready, they're delivering a new kind of VPP. So how does it work? Starting with features built into the products people already own and use. Things like smart thermostats, electric vehicles, and home batteries adjust automatically based on everyday routines, helping lower bills and add capacity. People can get meaningful savings and earn rewards from the grid, and this contributes to a reliable, resilient system that lowers costs for everyone across the grid. That is Everyday Electric's vision. It's the next great addition to your program portfolio. You can learn more at everydayelectric.com. What if you gave your climate donations the same due diligence you give your investments?

28:03That's what Giving Green does. Giving Green research is the strategies and nonprofits best positioned to unlock the next climate breakthrough. Climate impact is difficult to quantify, but Giving Green's research suggests a donation to one of their top climate nonprofits is roughly 10 times more effective than a high-quality carbon offset. And the Giving Green fund sends 100% of every dollar straight to them. Maximized impact per dollar, no-cut surges work. Make a first gift before the new year, and it will be matched up to $500. What a Giving Green dot-earth slash circuit to claim it. One thing I was really struck by was the White House getting behind this. Senator Heinrich talked about this in your interview, Jigger. He explained how this really started coming together when the White House moved with more urgency. What do you think is going on here? Is this that the reality of obstructionism is just not going to meet the moment that that was finally hitting them?

29:04Do any of you have any insight into what you think the White House's motivations were here? I'm curious what Jigger thinks, but maybe I'll just say, like, look, anyone trying to posit that they know anything about the White House's motivations or the thought I've promised is probably needs to be taken with the grain of salt. But this goes to, like, again, why I think there's a real urgency of this moment to get this done is, like, you know, Jigger rightly points out all of the ways that monopoly utilities are going to have issues with this bill. And it's like we've ever tried to fix this stuff before, but right now these utilities are on the back foot in lots of ways, in part because their influences counteracted by other actors in the economy who are consumers of electricity and are like, what the hell? Like, we have to be able to build energy in this country and connect to the grid. And I think, you know, in this moment, so much of the administrations to the extent they have any theory of the economy is bound up with the success of Americans' support for artificial intelligence.

30:04And that's going to require a lot of electricity. And like, I think they're getting a lot of pressure from those folks to like fix the status quo. But again, to me, that just means, you know, move with swiftness to get this bill passed because the opposition is going to get stronger, not weaker. I guess I'd ask Jane a follow-up question, which is that like what I don't understand is I'm not an expert at all. I'm politics, but like, as I understand it, like this is something that you would want to have passed before the election, right? Because then the president could say, hey, you know, like, I'm doing stuff here with the hell. And the fact that it's going into lame duck bothers me because I just think the president's going to be like, you know, this election was stolen from me. The Chinese like interfered with the election. And then, you know, like, I just don't know whether he's still going to like care about forcing Mike Johnson to get this done. Yeah, it's not my preferred timing. Let me just say, and I think it would have been great if this had happened a few weeks

31:08earlier, and we had the opportunity to have a vote before the election. And I don't, you know, I have lots of questions about the strategy here on all sides. But I think at the moment, as I said, we have text. We have momentum. We have, I think the key thing for me is between now and then, how do we get as many commitments as possible to move this very quickly in the house when everyone comes back? It should be at the top of the pile, not the bottom of the pile. And I think what that means is everyone now, everyone who wants to see this get done between now and then needs to be, you know, making loud public statements of support and continuing to build momentum and pressure for this to get done so that we can, you know, improve our country. Yeah, I mean, the one other thing I'd say, Stephen, on this is that having talked to a lot of folks in the last 24 hours, I'd say that our industry is at a turning point. And I don't quite understand that they really understand it. Like I just think that we are dominated by risk managers now in our industry, right?

32:16So like we look at the whole board of ACP or some of these other folks, right? Like European utilities or their next era or whatever, right? And so the number of people who look like a Sheldon Kimber or Dan Sugar or those kind of people is a much smaller group of people now, right? And so when you look at the oil and gas side of the ledger, it looks like they're still willing to take more risk than our side ledger. And so part of the challenge in this moment, whether it's, you know, the work that Tom Mattie is doing on, you know, holding Freedom Caucus members accountable or whether it's, you know, now that you have this law, if it passes, like, are we going to take a whole lot more risk to make sure that the cost advantages that we have are fully realized in this moment? Are we going to deploy VPPs at scale? Are we going to deploy greenhunting technologies at scale? Are we going to take it to governors and take it to state legislatures to actually finish the work,

33:21right? And I think that there's a lot of people in the White House and the places who are betting against our industry rising to the occasion. It's part of what makes the whole deal possible, right? Yeah. Like, is that we're just betting against each other? And as I said earlier, like, we'll win because I always win. Well, I mean, the oil gas mining provisions take effect pretty quickly, you know, almost immediately. You know, the transmission and market reforms are much longer term. Is this better for fossil fuels in the short term, with the benefits for clean energy coming much later? No, I mean, again, like, I think we need to be clear about the counterfactual here, which is that, like, what's happening is that a lot of off-grid gases getting built among other things. And so I'm just like the things that determine whether or not any given fossil or mining projects get built are going to be far broader than the specific changes that are relevant to those technologies in this bill. So I'm not worried about some, like, huge flood of, in fact, I think even leaving

34:23outside, leaving transmission aside, I think all of these changes are structurally likely to benefit clean energy, which goes to Jekers Point about who you're betting on here. It is true that the law takes time to implement, but let me say again, that is why we have to do it now. Like, let's be clear, it's going to take a couple of years for this to work itself through with the system, particularly the judicial review provisions. And if a democratic president comes into office in 2029 and we haven't cleared the decks on this stuff and we don't have the fiscal space to do the kind of spending we want with public money, like, we're in a real, we're in real trouble. Like, we have to get this done before 2028, in my view. So that's what I would say there. I guess I just also would encourage everyone to take a big step back. I think sometimes in the climate movement, we get a little bog down in this, like, draw boundary around a given geography and then, like, stop as many fossil projects in that geography as you can as a way to measure climate ambition. And to Jekers Point, that's just, like, not,

35:25doesn't make sense in terms of physics. That's like not how climate change works. Like, these are often global markets. Even if it were the case that, like, a few more natural gas pipelines get built to the northeast as a consequence of this bill, I think that will pale in comparison to the clean energy deployment upside. And what matters for the climate is global emissions. And we still have clean air act and clean water act protections for local impacts of this stuff. So I don't now. Let's dig into the data center portion one more time. And I actually want to do that. In the context of a related story, which is the president's rate payer protection pledge, it's been seven months since Trump unveiled that voluntary protection pledge with executives from all the big tech companies. All the hyperscalers have signed on. The White House says that 200 other utilities, cooperatives and data center developers have signed on as well. And the White House claims that this now covers 80% of all power users. If you look at the website, it's filled with gushing quotes from utility executives saying how proud they are to work with the president on this.

36:27But it has no teeth, right? And we're seeing why that matters. And I think that brings us to why this the data center portions of this permitting bill matters. Before we talk a little bit about the permitting bill again, which does have teeth, I want to unpack the rate payer protection pledge. Jager, you've been talking about this a little bit. You mentioned Duke and energy earlier. One of the big criticisms is that this is non-binding, of course. And it does nothing to address the natural position of utilities, which is, you know, they want to build as much as possible and rate base it. So where are we seeing that contradiction play out? Well, across the country, I think that, you know, there is a, you know, a huge body of law, basically, in the United States around customers paying for their own upgrades, right? Whether it's a steel industry or the aluminum industry or the people. And there is a process by which they can put that money in and offset rate base from the utilities. And the utilities hate it. Like they're just like,

37:33we are in the business of putting capital out the door. We are not in the business of basically being a contractor for a data center. And so we don't want to make these upgrades unless they actually hit our balance sheet. And, you know, like a very high profile case just occurred in Dominion's territory where Microsoft offered to pay for a lot of upgrades and Dominion said, hell's no. And went to the SEC and said, no. And, you know, to the credit of the regulator there, they ruled against Dominion and said, no, you will take this money and you will regulate it. Right. Sometimes good at their jobs. Yes, indeed. Yeah. Now, energy has a law in place in Arkansas that sort of allows the utilities to sort of go through this process without really getting regulatory approval. I think we have shamed energies so much in the last two weeks that

38:34they are now re-discovering the fact that they shouldn't hate their ratepayers as much. And so in that case, Google paid for part of the cost of a new solar project, but not all of the cost of a new solar project. And energy is like, well, because Google didn't pay for all of it and only part of it because some of it was for normal load growth in Arkansas. We're going to view Google's payment as a prepayment of services in the future and rate based all of it. And then as a result, they got, you know, an increase of $5.77 a month for every 1,000 kilowatt hours you use, which is basically an average monthly utilization for a homeowner. And so, like, I think everybody from the K-do Institute to AEI, to others like, whereas up in arms over this. And so, like, think you're seeing like in real time, people recognizing that this is not working, right? That the data center companies in my opinion, and obviously, I'm sure that there are exceptions to this rule,

39:35are trying their best to meet the pledge just because why not? And everyone hates them. And so, they can't want to give them more reasons to hate them. But the utility companies are doing everything in their power to stop them and getting away with it. Like, most of the polling data shows that the voters are blaming the data centers over the utilities. And so, part of, I think, the calculus here from the utilities is that they're going to be able to hide underneath the hatred of the data centers. But, you know, as I keep reminding my utility CEO friends, I'm like, that is only going to last so long. Like, at some point, the data center companies will actually hire real marketing and comms people. And they are going to put it right in your lap. I don't see how this is going to last forever. And there are 36 governors running for election this fall. And every one of them actually is promising to solve the problem. And so, villainizing data centers,

40:37when it's not their fault, eventually, they're going to get smart on the fact that it's their monopoly utility companies that have been screwing them all along. I also just think so, like, honestly, we take a big step back, like, so much of the fight on affordability and whatever. Like, we really are living in a country that is in an electricity scarcity environment, which makes no sense given our industries and our technologies. And like, anything we can do to fix that is going to put downward pressure on the politics of affordability and the actual affordability crisis. Yeah, it's all about plug-ins solar. Do you see the utilities lobbying against this or trying to lobby for major changes? Obviously, their power lobbying power is diminished a little bit because everyone sees utilities as more toxic. But do you think that their lobbying power has diminished enough that they may not have the power to make these changes, whatever changes they want? I just want to put on like a flagal tin hat and suggest something here,

41:40which is that these people aren't stupid and they're going to try to lobby through other venues. And like, whether that's NGOs or unions or whatever, like, we all just need to be very clear right about the various strategies they're going to try to deploy. And it's just, we're not going to be able to control it, which is why we just need to be out there as loud. This is not a moment for people to sit on their hands and be like, I don't know, maybe we'll get a better deal later. Like, I don't know, like, the bill's really long. I haven't had time to read it yet. Like, it's unacceptable. If you care about climate change, if you care about clean electricity, everyone's going to have to get off their asses and fight for this bill. Yeah, no, look, I agree with you completely. And I think this is where Senator Heinrich was very clear on the podcast, which was that, you know, he's like, this is going to create a huge amount of IBW work, right? And he is absolutely working closely with the unions from the laborers to the national, you know, association of, you know, the building trades and others. Like, he is working

42:42hard to make sure that that coalition stays together. And he was very articulate about it. Like, he was like, look, they are going to try to separate people out. And we cannot let them do that. Because, look, and I, like, I think the utilities are amazing people and they provide an extraordinarily valuable service. But in this, what's that? He says that before he winds into the eye. I say that regularly, right? But I think it's important to recognize that, you know, there's like decades of literature that shows that monopoly organizations have a really hard time adopting new technology, right? That's why the permitting bill had to be so explicit about some of these new technologies that they need to adopt, right? And so, you know, old habits that I heard and we are moving in that direction. But I totally agree with Jane that like, they have so many ways to impact these things. And the way that you will see this impacted, I guarantee you,

43:42is through a manager's amendment. It is not going to be through like an amendment on the floor of the house or the Senate is going to be through the package of amendments that go through Sandra Whitehouse directly or some of the other managers. I just don't have a handle on the congressional calendar or politics right now. Like, what are the big uphill battles right now after the midterms? You talked about that there are some risks. If Trump gets sidetracked or priorities change, like, how big are the potential risks? And do we actually think that they're good chances that this will pass? Look, like there are risks and in the face of risks, you do everything you can to mitigate them knowing that there's uncertainty and it's kind of unknowable. So I think what we really need to see now and over the next several weeks is very loud public statements of support of the bill as it is written from everyone with political power who wants to make it happen. And I think we should all be pushing for that. That I think is like anything we can do to build momentum going into the lame doc is really crucial. I think what is going to matter here is

44:50continuing to make this a priority. The lame doc is like very short. It's like quite even if there was not this risk that like the president would be distracted by other things after a midterm defeat. The lame doc is just really short. So anything we can do to say like this has to get done, this has to get done fast, do not get distracted by false promises of some imagined future better deal. Like Democrats need this in 2029. We need it to date, a constrain the president's attacks on renewables. Like we need it now and we just need to keep saying that. Just 10 acts, whatever Jane just said. Like I just think like we are in a place right now where there's a lot of people who think that this bill is likely to pass. It is not likely to pass to be crystal clear. When you think about just how uphill the climb is to just get it passed through the Senate and then let alone the house taking it up and Trump getting distracted by Iran and all these other things, it is unlikely actually to pass, but it is our very best chance we have ever

45:54had to solve these issues. And so if you are not 100% all in on passing this bill, then you might as well be against the bill. So anybody who like gives me hedging milk toast language is against the bill. And I think everyone should view everybody who is hedging or is careful or is not crystal clear that they are 110% behind the bill passing is against the bill. And can I just say also like surely there are things that could be strengthened and improved in whatever like this is just how it is. But like if the argument for not doing it is that Democratic are going to win all of the elections and be able to do something quote unquote better, let the better thing be improvements to a bill we've already passed. So final question on this. Assume this does pass in say 2035. What do you think is built more because of it? Is it transmission lines? Is it renewables? Is it pipelines and mines? Like what do

46:54you think the balance of infrastructure looks like? I think that in general we are in a place where transmission has been extraordinarily difficult politically. Like I think that there actually was a lot of authorities that the Biden administration had from the 2005-2007 energy policy acts etc. that it took way too long to fully implement and all of those things. But the reason that that was the case is that it's politically just really difficult to go up against state rights and all these other things. This permitting bill basically gives the next administration a mandate to fix all of it. And it also gives it a mandate to get large loads online faster. It gives it large loads a mandate to be flexible grid assets to help the rest of the grid operate. These are all things that Texas, frankly, has done extraordinarily well and all of the rest of the independent system

47:58operators across the country have done a horrible job of. And so if this bill passes that will be a very clear signal to everybody in the country that you need to be a lot more like Texas. And that includes base power and residential battery storage. It includes grid enhancing technologies and advanced conductors. It includes everything that you possibly wanted to do. But forgot that it was your top priority. Like all of it is going to be helped by this. And I think that the thing that people I think just have such a hard time understanding is just how beat up a lot of the entrepreneurs in our country are. Right? For all of the craziness around the reindustrialized conference and this and that and whatever else. We absolutely have this broken system where we invent everything in this country and then don't systematically have people that

49:01are supposed to help you deploy them at scale. And I think this permitting bill sends a signal that we're supposed to actually care about America doing big things again. And that matters. The vibes matter. All of that matters. Yeah. I think I totally agree with Jigger. At the highest level we do need as a country not just for climate but for all sorts of reasons. Much more robust investment going into energy infrastructure. And there's a thing here about capital allocation which is a today if you're deciding where to put a dollar like you may put an energy infrastructure but you may put it someplace else. And the biggest cost in a lot of these project isn't you know bits of kit or steel or whatever it's time. And every year a project is just waiting investors are paying. So if you cut the wait time and the risk and the uncertainty the all these projects are going to be much cheaper to finance. And we're going to just get a lot more capital into building not just faster just in general in building. Jane Flagel is a senior fellow at the States Forum and

50:05the Searchlight Institute. I know it's been a really busy week or a couple of weeks for you. Jane so grateful you could come on. Love having you here. Good to see you. Thanks so much for having me. You guys great to see you both. Jigger you're pretty good yourself too. Here's the best. Look at that. I am not a PhD. And honestly Jane I think that the work you did to get the permitting bill to this point right now is nothing short of heroic. And so I appreciate everything that you did to make us successful here. Absolutely. Open Circuit is produced by latitude media. The show is edited by me by Sean Markwanda and Anne Bailey. You can of course find all of our audio episodes on Apple Spotify or wherever you like to listen to your podcasts. Go to latitude media.com for our coverage on permitting reform. We've got a lot of pieces there and of course check out our newsletters and our industry coverage

51:08across the board. We also have our AI Energy Nexus newsletter for those following AI and energy. And of course you subscribe to us on YouTube. Latitude Media has both our podcast catalyst with shalecon and open circuit. And you can find years of our episodes on YouTube. So thanks so much for being here. I'm Stephen Lacey. I'll catch you next week.