by Megan Jenkins
Read this post on Josh’s Substack: Powering Spaceship Earth.
Pacific Legal Foundation just launched a new practice group on Environment and Natural Resources. Our goal is to transform environmental law from a tool of scarcity to a platform for abundance. Check out our newest research report here.
Six months after receiving “final” approval, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revoked its permit for a major wind farm project off the coast of New Jersey. The project would have supplied 2.8 gigawatts of power—enough to power one million American homes. The Atlantic Shores project had already gone through a complex multi-year permitting process, including demonstrating compliance with the Clean Air Act and completing a 45-day public comment period. Despite this time, effort, and investment, the project’s approval was abruptly overturned after President Trump’s executive order mandating a review of all wind leasing and permitting on federal land.
This reversal is just one example of how political interference in energy markets makes it more difficult to build the energy infrastructure that America desperately needs. Instead of making it harder to build, the government should focus on removing barriers to the development of new energy projects, regardless of the source.
A pro-consumer energy policy should be technology-neutral, allowing energy sources to compete on cost and reliability. This approach will require removing subsidies that favor one energy source over another, which did infect the Atlantic Shores project. These subsidies make little economic sense and deserve intense scrutiny on their merits, repeal, or at least cutbacks. But subsidies are just one example of how government puts its thumb on the scale for preferred energy sources. Embracing free markets in energy also requires tackling America’s burdensome permitting process that holds back major projects that would make human life better.
Demand for energy, especially electricity, is expected to grow rapidly. The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand from data centers will double or triple by 2028. Coupled with growth in domestic manufacturing, electric vehicle adoption, and increased electrification of new industries, this will lead to rising energy demand across the U.S.
Energy is crucial to human well-being, allowing us to heat our homes in the winter and cool them in the summer. It is also the major bottleneck to leveraging advances in artificial intelligence to boost innovation that could lead to untold improvements in human life.
But as America’s energy demand continues to grow, bureaucratic hurdles make it unnecessarily difficult to develop new energy projects. One of the biggest obstacles is the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which creates lengthy permitting timelines that can stall energy projects for years—even up to a decade. Though permits are supposed to be issued in two years, only one in three projects meets this deadline. On average, the most intensive reviews take 3.8 years.
These delays are not exclusive to renewables like wind and solar. Fossil fuel projects, including oil and natural gas, face similarly cumbersome regulatory barriers. By forcing companies to navigate this bureaucratic maze, the government is stifling innovation and restricting energy supplies at a time when we need more power, not less. As would happen in any other case, restricting supply drives up prices for consumers. This leaves families to make hard choices between groceries, medical care, and their utility bills. The Energy Information Administration estimates that about one in four households reported some kind of energy insecurity—that means things like reducing or going without basic necessities, receiving a disconnection notice, or keeping their home at unhealthy or unsafe temperatures.
Not all of those barriers to energy abundance are federal. Another major obstacle is local opposition, often referred to as “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) resistance. Whether it’s new housing developments, fossil-fueled power plants, or offshore wind farms, local opposition makes it increasingly difficult to build. In the case of Atlantic Shores, local opposition by groups including Save Long Beach Island aggressively lobbied to stop the project, claiming it would harm the North Atlantic right whale and “devastate local economy, property values and businesses.” Despite being 8.7 miles away from the shoreline, the group claimed that “many beachgoers will find the rotating blades disturbing to look at.”
Local input has its place, but allowing local opposition to halt beneficial projects that have completed all the necessary legal groundwork helps no one. It also introduces significant regulatory uncertainty. If investors and developers cannot trust that an approved permit will remain valid, they will be less likely to pursue new projects in the future. This chilling effect discourages innovation and investment in an energy sector that desperately needs both.
The political whiplash of recent years demonstrates all too well the effects of regulatory uncertainty. When the Biden administration entered office in 2021, it issued a moratorium on offshore oil and gas production. Similarly, when President Trump entered office, he paused all offshore wind leasing. Regardless of which technology is the current favorite, this political approach to energy policy harms consumers by limiting our ability to produce abundant energy from America’s vast natural resources.
Wind power, like all energy sources, has both strengths and limitations. It provides a renewable power source but often must be built in remote areas, creating the need for additional transmission lines. Wind energy has its champions and its critics, but politicians shouldn’t be among them. When government gets involved in picking winners and losers in energy policy, cronyism wins and consumers lose.
The U.S. must increase energy production, not restrict it. Political interference, subsidies, excessive regulations, and NIMBY-driven opposition are stifling energy development and hurting American consumers. The best way forward is to let markets—not politicians—determine which energy sources are most efficient, reliable, and cost-effective.
Megan Jenkins is the strategic research director at Pacific Legal Foundation. You can read her new report on the role of natural resources in human flourishing here. Follow Pacific Legal Foundation’s work on environmental and natural resource law here.