The call is coming from inside the house
Whatever the problem, building more and faster is a part of the solution
Problems that will splash across the evening news tonight are almost all downstream of an inability to build. They cut remarkably across the usual partisan lines:
Worries about meeting the energy demands of AI.
Housing costs rising.
Nuclear power stagnating. Even the restart of TMI signals that it’s easier to restart than build new!
Energy projects of all kinds, renewable and fossil, are caught in a web of red tape.
Burdensome rules holding back rooftop solar and residential battery systems.
Take a simple lesson from these examples: The call is coming from inside the house.
That’s the point that Taylor Barkley, our Director of Public Policy here at the Abundance Institute, makes in a short piece for the Washington Examiner. The jumping-off point is the election and why Trump won. Here’s Taylor’s conclusion:
People voted for Trump because they’re fed up with years of regulation-induced stagnation and looming national decline. They’re looking for the next president, and leaders at every level, to unleash a future of abundance for all.
There are too many barriers to progress. The poster child for this is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). It’s a law that lets the vegetarians win but does little to effectively promote environmental ends. NEPA has dominated conversations about vetocracy and environmental policy for years. Every president since Bill Clinton has wanted to tweak it so it does more than produce “endless documentation.”
As important as this work is, it’s fortunate that more are realizing that there are state-level thickets to pass through as well. Plenty to do for leaders at every level, as Taylor put it. Thomas Hochman at the Foundation for American Innovation has a new paper out detailing these thickets in 32 states.
Hochman’s project calls out four big challenges that states can address, state environmental policy acts, The Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and state endangered species acts. Though two of these are federal laws, states still play a large role in issuing permits. In fact, Hochman estimates that states issue more than 75 percent of the permits authorized by federal law. In many of these processes, states have wide latitude to improve policies.
This focus on state-level permit reforms aligns closely with a broader concern echoed at the 2024 National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) meeting. Energy reporter Jason Fordney summarized the major “theme” from the NARUC meeting as “an urgent need to speed up the siting of electric transmission, gas pipeline, and water infrastructure projects.”
In truth, building quickly is an ability that we lost, as American Enterprise Institute’s Senior Fellow Will Rinehart explained to me. Looking at the Apollo space program as an example, we moved much faster through even the most complex parts. Just “four months separates the initial request for proposals and the final decision” on the Apollo command and service module. These were the two pieces that housed the astronauts and propelled the spaceship. On July 28, 1961, NASA requested proposals. On November 28, 1961, NASA announced its selections. As Will put it, that’s a schedule and pace that we need to get back to.1
Everyone can find something to like in the agenda behind this kind of work. There’s a fundamental mistake in imagining a conflict between growth and green goals. Economic growth, technological progress, and environmental progress all go hand in hand.
But only if we can build.
Will’s Techne newsletter, published by The Dispatch, is excellent. His essay on medical innovations is a human and stirring argument for moving faster.