Christina Hayes is executive director for Grid Action, an advocacy group supporting electric transmission.
Washington is finally putting real momentum behind permitting reform, and the House’s SPEED Act (H.R. 4776) reflects a welcome recognition that our current system is too slow and too unpredictable to support the kind of energy and economic growth the country is experiencing.
The bill from House Natural Resources Chairman Bruce Westerman, R-Ark., and Rep. Jared Golden, D-Maine, aims to modernize the National Environmental Policy Act by shortening environmental reviews, reducing litigation delays and engaging earlier with communities. These are meaningful, practical fixes that would give many energy and infrastructure projects a clearer and faster path forward.
But as important as these steps are, they address only part of what today’s economy requires. The SPEED Act moves quickly on the permitting challenges we’ve been talking about for years, yet it doesn’t fully confront the challenge that has emerged in just the last few: the incredible pace of growth in electricity demand and the central role transmission must play in meeting it.
In short, the bill tackles the permitting issues we’ve long recognized, but not the ones that have suddenly become decisive.
Everywhere in Washington’s energy conversation, from the Department of Energy’s calls for rapid load-growth planning to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s work on interconnecting large loads, there is a shared understanding that the grid is facing pressures unlike anything we’ve seen in a generation. AI clusters, next-generation data centers, semiconductor factories and modern manufacturing facilities are coming online at extraordinary speed.
They’re bringing jobs and investment, but they’re also driving electricity demand to levels that would have seemed improbable only a few years ago. While the SPEED Act helps many kinds of projects move faster, it leaves transmission, the infrastructure that ties all these new loads and resources together, largely dependent on the same fragmented processes we’ve struggled with for decades.
That mismatch matters. Even the fastest NEPA review cannot overcome the structural reality that multi-state transmission lines are permitted through a patchwork of state-by-state decisions with no single entity accountable for getting a project across the finish line. By contrast, pipelines and other major interstate infrastructure have long benefited from clearer federal authority.
Fragmented application of the SPEED Act to transmission will fail to deliver on the siting and permitting reform this Congress is committed to passing — and that this country so badly needs.
This is becoming the quiet consensus behind nearly every policy discussion in Washington: Our generation mix is evolving; our load is surging and our grid was not built for what we are now asking of it. Whether the goal is economic competitiveness, affordability or reliability, transmission keeps emerging as the missing link.
Companies looking to build new data centers or factories are increasingly running into grid constraints that slow or redirect investment. Utilities are being asked to serve enormous new loads in areas that were never designed for that scale of growth, and consumers ultimately pay the price when congestion forces more expensive power onto the system.
None of this diminishes the value of the reforms in the SPEED Act. If anything, it underscores their importance. But it also makes clear that a permitting package capable of supporting America’s economic ambitions must apply to multi-state transmission in its entirety, not in bits and pieces.
As the SPEED Act moves toward a broader negotiation with the Senate, Congress has an opportunity to align permitting policy with the realities of today’s grid.
That means acknowledging that transmission must be planned and permitted based on how electricity actually flows across regions, not based on the boundaries drawn a century ago. It means recognizing that modernizing the grid is essential to keeping costs down and reliability up.
That translates to providing a clearer federal pathway for major interstate transmission lines, paired with strong early engagement for landowners and communities so projects are shaped thoughtfully and responsibly.
The United States is positioning itself to lead in AI, advanced manufacturing and clean industrial growth. That leadership depends on an energy system that can deliver affordable, reliable electricity where it’s needed, when it’s needed.
Permitting reform is overdue, and the House deserves credit for pushing this conversation forward. But the work is only complete when the grid is included alongside every other nationally significant energy asset.
The future is arriving fast. The SPEED Act, only when applied fully and comparably to all linear energy infrastructure, will help meet it.
