NWEC Statement on the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA)

We can do better than BAAJA to grow clean energy and protect communities. NWEC recognizes that achieving a clean, reliable, and affordable future requires increasing the pace of clean energy deployment and transmission capacity. Time is of the essence, but we must get the right reforms in place to build community support and protect the natural resources we all care about.

These reforms should include: 

• Investing in existing aging utility infrastructure
• Protecting communities, habitats, and infrastructure from the increasing wildfire dangers
• Meeting future energy power needs from next generation clean energy resources
• Investing in transmission resources to replace old parts of the system and add new resources to facilitate transmitting power from new resource locations to new load centers.

To accomplish all of that, we must carefully balance many factors, including our national legacy of strong environmental protections and Tribal sovereignty, while improving public participation in decision making and removing unnecessary hurdles to building the clean energy future. We must ensure that consumers can manage the cost (especially those who are vulnerable and energy burdened), protect the environment in which we will build or upgrade our energy system, and fund the agencies that review permits and make decisions.

Balancing those aspects will require careful policymaking and collaboration with all stakeholders. Unfortunately, H.R. 2347—the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA)—is not careful policy and excludes many important voices, while short-cutting public process and court review. We know from experience that energy development that ignores stakeholder and community concerns can invite opposition, further slowing down the siting and permitting process. 

The bill shows a bipartisan commitment to providing more certainty to developing energy and transmission resources. However, it trades that certainty for removing standards that control pollution, including greenhouse gas emissions, and undermines other fundamental environmental and public participation statutes. The tradeoff is not beneficial to the environment nor consumers. BAAJA is a poor policy response to the serious needs we have.

We urge members of this Congress to reject BAAJA and instead begin a truly collaborative, focused, timely policy development process to better balance the complex interests at stake in building our clean energy future. We stand ready to help find solutions.