JEC Republicans: Policy Reforms to Keep the Lights On, Fix America’s Power Outages

 

WASHINGTON—In the last year, Americans in New York, California, and Texas have suffered from major power crises. Large-scale power crises have become unfortunately frequent, and judging by the U.S. record over the past year, not enough has been done to prevent them.

In new research released today, Joint Economic Committee Republicans outline a series of policy reforms to address America’s aging and unreliable electric system. They argue that overregulation unnecessarily holds back power generation and transmission, harming Americans who want to keep the lights on and causing the U.S. to fall behind countries like China in our ability to transmit power over long distances.

JEC Republicans call on Congress to reform the costly and easily abused National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) process by passing the UNSHACKLE Act, which would protect permitting decisions from excessive delays. They also recommend that Congress encourage faster permitting for long-range power transmission, limiting the number of regulators with veto power over a project.

These reforms could “make the U.S. power grid more robust against days of high demand, reduce the frequency of damaging outages, and mitigate energy costs to American families and institutions.”

Click here to read our findings and recommendations.

The Joint Economic Committee is Congress’s bicameral economic research center and home of the Social Capital Project, led by Ranking Member Mike Lee.