Read this post on Josh’s Substack: Powering Spaceship Earth.
In a December oped, Chris Koopman and I laid out why federal lands should be at the heart of a new energy revolution—one that unleashes both traditional oil and gas, solar, wind, and emerging technologies like geothermal. In a more recent piece, I stressed how federal rules make it so difficult to build on these lands that many developers simply write them off.
With that history, it’s encouraging to see the Department of Energy moving in this direction. They’re requesting ways to leverage federal lands to enable artificial intelligence development. As Secretary Chris Wright put it:
The global race for AI dominance is the next Manhattan project. The Department of Energy is taking important steps to leverage our domestic resources to power the AI revolution, while continuing to deliver affordable, reliable and secure energy to the American people.
Notably, Wright made the announcement before a visit with Colorado governor Jared Polis. That matters because nowhere is the frustration with NEPA and federal lands more acute than in the West. Vast federal holdings fall under a complex, slow-moving NEPA review process.
This disproportional burden on Western states, coupled with the lawsuit factory that NEPA has become nationwide, stifles precisely the kind of innovation the United States needs for 21st-century leadership. Whether it’s powering large-scale AI data centers, jump-starting geothermal development, or expanding solar and wind, federal lands have the resources to do it all—if only Washington would adopt a “Build, baby, build” mindset instead of tangling every project in red tape.
That’s why an “all of the above and all of the below” strategy—one that supports everything from oil and gas to solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, and more—must be matched by real permitting reform. Most of the time, energy development is tied to fuels, but mining for critical minerals matters too. We shouldn’t take almost 30 years to open new mines. There’s more than NEPA at hand in all of these cases, but the Western US suffers from a heavy disadvantage because of the red tape.
Setting aside zones on federal lands where NEPA hurdles are minimized or fast-tracked would open massive opportunities. Geothermal drilling, solar farms in the Southwest, advanced reactors, and new transmission lines could move forward without years of costly delays. In fact, some of the successes in oil and gas are evidence of the promise of pulling back NEPA rules. As has long been pointed out, oil and gas development got an exemption that was denied to geothermal.
That favoritism towards oil and gas is changing, but it reflects that NEPA is used to prevent competition against longstanding business models. Why let the upstarts in to threaten your bottom line? Red tape is often a barrier to competition hidden under a guise of public protection or service.
Put simply, federal lands are America’s energy jackpot. We’ve allowed regulatory barriers to stand in the way of the abundant power our economy demands. It’s past time to cut through the bureaucracy, harness the unique power of these public lands, and get back to building big things in America.
We’ll all be better off for it.