Whitehouse, NAM Convene Roundtable with RI Manufacturing, Labor, and Business Leaders to Support Permitting Reform

Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act aims to unleash renewable energy, lower emissions and electricity costs, and fight climate change

Pawtucket, RI – Today, U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee (EPW), and Jay Timmons, President of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM), convened a roundtable with leaders from Rhode Island’s manufacturing, labor, and business communities to discuss Whitehouse’s Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA).  The roundtable followed a tour of the Cooley Group’s manufacturing facility in Pawtucket.

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act will deliver cheaper energy, more well-paying jobs, and responsible growth by accelerating the permitting and construction of critical energy and infrastructure projects while maintaining key environmental and historic preservation safeguards.  The bipartisan legislation would bolster Rhode Island’s growing blue economy and clean energy industry, create loads of well-paying local union jobs, and build a more flexible energy grid that Rhode Island businesses and communities can rely on.  BAAJA has received support from a broad national coalition of labor leaders, energy producers, and nonprofits.

“Rhode Islanders want lower energy bills and more well-paying union jobs.  Passing this bipartisan bill will flood the grid with clean, affordable energy, make sure data centers start paying their fair share, and provide regulatory certainty to small businesses.  A cleaner, safer, more abundant, and less expensive energy future awaits us on the other side of this permitting bill,” said Whitehouse, Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  “The Trump administration must now end their mischief and show some real regulatory good faith to unlock the votes necessary to seal this deal.”

“Senator Whitehouse’s leadership in crafting and advancing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is a breakthrough for manufacturing in America. He understands that manufacturers need certainty to build, grow and invest — and that once a permit is issued, a project should be able to move forward without years of unnecessary delays. Our broken permitting system costs manufacturers nearly $8 billion annually — resources we’d much rather spend on ribbon cuttings than red tape. Thanks to Senator Whitehouse’s leadership, we have a real opportunity to modernize this outdated system, unleash investment and create good-paying jobs while maintaining strong environmental protections and meaningful community engagement. Manufacturers are grateful for his unwavering commitment, and we’re proud to stand with him to get this bipartisan legislation across the finish line,” said Jay Timmons, President & CEO, National Association of Manufacturers.

The legislation was negotiated by Whitehouse along with U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Chairman of the EPW Committee; Mike Lee (R-UT), Chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee; and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Ranking Member of the ENR Committee.  It was unveiled late last month.

“The Cooley Team was pleased to welcome Senator Whitehouse to our Pawtucket operation and thanks NAM for bringing together this important discussion on permitting reform and the future of American manufacturing.  Growth, job creation, and environmental stewardship can and should advance together.  With leaders like the Senator championing bipartisan reform, we can encourage investment and hiring, expand access to affordable, reliable, cleaner energy, and maintain strong environmental protections,” said Dan Dwight, President & CEO, Cooley Group and NAM Executive Committee Member.

“We need Congress to pass the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act right away.  There is no time to lose when it comes to passing a bill of this magnitude to create good union jobs and lower families’ energy bills,” said Michael F. Sabitoni, General Secretary-Treasurer of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA).  “This legislation is an example of what leaders in Washington can accomplish when they set differences aside to work across the aisle and improve the lives of working men and women across the country.”

“The only way we are truly create a cleaner and greener economic future is to build new renewable energy infrastructure.  We can no longer be held back by a permitting regime designed to thwart that development.  The Rhode Island labor movement is leading on climate, and this proposal goes a long way towards helping Rhode Island meet its Act on Climate goals,” said Patrick Crowley, President, RI AFL-CIO.

“For U.S. manufacturers, access to reliable, affordable energy is essential to remaining competitive, creating jobs, and driving economic growth.  This bipartisan permitting reform legislation represents one of the most significant efforts in decades to eliminate unnecessary regulatory barriers, modernize our electric grid, expand energy supply, and accelerate critical infrastructure investments.  We commend Senator Sheldon Whitehouse for his leadership in advancing reforms that will strengthen grid reliability, help reduce energy costs, and ensure American manufacturers have the energy infrastructure necessary to innovate, grow, and compete globally,” said Melissa Travis, President & CEO, Rhode Island Manufacturers Association (RIMA).

“For Rhode Island businesses, time is money – and lengthy and unpredictable permitting processes can stall a project or send it to another state entirely,” said Liz Catucci, executive director for The Partnership for Rhode Island.  “The Partnership supports the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026 because faster, more reliable permitting will help Rhode Island compete for the infrastructure and energy investments that create good-paying jobs here.  We’re grateful for Senator Whitehouse’s leadership and willingness to work across the aisle on an issue that directly affects our businesses.”

“An outdated permitting process is holding up economic development in Rhode Island.  Modernizing that system will help streamline energy, manufacturing, and infrastructure projects, bolster local small businesses, and create new jobs,” said Laurie White, President of the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.  “I applaud the leadership of Senator Whitehouse and his bipartisan negotiating partners, and Congress should immediately prioritize passing the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.”

The bipartisan legislation provides greater certainty for projects that have already been permitted and financed, including by preventing future administrations from arbitrarily blocking entire classes of energy projects, while establishing clear timelines for environmental reviews and legal challenges.  It also includes targeted reforms to expand and modernize the electric grid, speed the development of geothermal and other energy projects, and ensure that rapidly growing data centers pay the full cost of their associated transmission needs rather than passing those costs on to families and small businesses. 

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act would:

• Build more transmission, faster by strengthening the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC) “backstop” siting authority — giving the federal government stronger authority to approve power lines when a state rejects or does not act upon an application – and allowing applications for large lines to be processed simultaneously with state reviews, helping needed projects move through permitting faster.
• Get more energy onto the grid by:
  • Requiring regional and interregional transmission planning that accounts for where new transmission is needed.  
  • Requiring advanced transmission technologies, such as advanced conductors and grid-enhancing technologies, which make better use of the grid we already have.
  • Requiring coordinated generation interconnection and transmission planning – which is not happening in most areas of the country – and using computing technologies to evaluate requests to connect new energy projects to the grid, reducing the cost and speeding up the process of bringing new generation onto our grid.
  • Mandating that transmission planning organizations (RTOs and ISOs) allow aggregations of distributed energy resources to operate as virtual power plants and participate in wholesale electricity markets, helping meet growing demand with more available supply.
  • Requiring BLM to complete geothermal drilling permits and authorizations in 60 days and exempting low disturbance exploration and development activities from additional environmental reviews. 
• Force data centers pay their fair share by requiring data centers, and not American families and small businesses, to pay for their cost of service and upgrades to the transmission network; right now, data centers are only required to pay for service or upgrades, not both.   

• Create jobs across the energy supply chain by boosting the build out ofmore transmission, clean energy, supply manufacturing, and other grid infrastructure.
• Create greater certainty for projects permitted and financed across administrations by prohibiting any administration from delaying or blocking permitting of a class of energy projects – meaning no administration can block all solar, wind, or other class of energy project permits without facing legal action and fines. 
• Set clear deadlines for environmental reviews — including a two-year deadline for Environmental Impact Statement reviews and a one-year deadline for Environmental Assessment reviews, with consequences for agencies that miss those deadlines. That means environmental reviews still happen, but not indefinitely.

• Establish a new National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) consultation process that runs alongside National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews with a defined time limit, securing a statutory role for Tribes in determining how projects affect historic and cultural resources and protecting Tribes’ rights to formally consult during the processes — two things the Section 106 reforms attempted to eliminate.
• Limit the types of impacts that projects are required to mitigate, creating clearer boundaries around which effects a project must mitigate or minimize.
• Set clear limitations on when and how a project may be legally challenged.
  • Sets a 150-day deadline for legal challenges under the Clean Water Act (CWA), Endangered Species Act (ESA), NEPA, and NHPA.
  • Generally limits who can bring a legal challenge to people or groups that participated in the relevant comment period or Tribal consultation process. 
  • Limits when a court can temporarily stop a project from moving forward, while preserving the existing ability to seek that relief under the Administrative Procedures Act.
• Allow states to handle endangered species consultations when they have the capacity to do so. States with the demonstrated staffing, expertise, and resource capacity to take over certain wildlife-related consultations are permitted to do so.
• Clarify the limits on state water-quality reviews by limiting state certifications to water pollution directly caused by a specific source for gas pipelines and transmission lines and prohibiting use of the process to address unrelated issues.  
• Prevent the federal government from changing the rules after the fact for certain wetlands and waterways by stopping EPA from preemptively or retroactively removing areas of land from the federal water-quality certification process.
• Fund a first-of-its-kind Abandoned Hardrock Mine Fund, providing a mandatory funding source dedicated to cleaning up abandoned hardrock mines.

The bill text is available here.

Photo credit: Dave Bohrer, The National Association of Manufacturers

The post Whitehouse, NAM Convene Roundtable with RI Manufacturing, Labor, and Business Leaders to Support Permitting Reform appeared first on Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.