The proposed U.S. infrastructure permitting reform bill would be a disaster for communities and for climate action
The U.S. Senate’s proposed Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is being presented as a “compromise” to support transmission and clean energy, but it is in fact a gift to the fossil fuel industry. The bill would strip communities of critical environmental protections, accelerate a massive expansion of gas infrastructure to power AI data centers, and undermine future climate action. Our analysis finds that even with the most optimistic modeling, the bill would fall far short of the emissions reductions needed to meet climate goals.
U.S. Senators Capito (R-WV), Lee (R-UT), Whitehouse (D-RI), and Heinrich (D-NM) recently introduced an energy infrastructure permitting reform bill, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA), which they hope to pass before the end of this Congress.
Proponents of the bill believe that reducing barriers to building electricity transmission lines, enabling grid connections, and removing social and environmental requirements for energy projects will enable clean energy to grow, thereby reducing emissions. However, because the bill removes barriers regardless of energy technology, and given currently planned projects and the current political environment, it is more likely to disproportionately lock in gas-fired power generation. To adequately address the climate crisis, energy sources need to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy – not lock in an all-of-the-above strategy that will not sufficiently reduce emissions.
As written, the bill will also cripple federal and state governments’ ability to protect communities and to take important actions to limit climate change in the future. In fact, some provisions push deregulation so far that they read like a fossil fuel industry wish list. In short, the bill could end any meaningful regulation of the fossil fuel industry, whether to achieve climate goals or protect air or water quality.
The bill would dismantle federal statutes that protect Tribes, communities, and public health
To remove barriers to permitting, the bill would lift requirements for projects to comply with federal statutes, including the Clean Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act. Environmental provisions that protect air, water, land, and public health will not be able to be used to challenge projects. These relaxed provisions apply regardless of energy source and will support continued expansion of oil and gas infrastructure, countering gains for clean energy while taking away key tools that Tribes, states, communities, and individuals currently have to protect themselves from harm by corporate interests.
Given the huge buildout of gas projects in the works to fuel data centers, if this bill passes, communities where these projects are planned will lose critical tools to protect themselves from the impacts of these projects. We will additionally miss climate goals by a huge margin, further impacting public health, the environment, and communities.
The bill would dramatically limit climate, environmental, and social protections by future administrations
Some of the most concerning sections of the bill, Sections 1401 and 1402, could undermine the power of any future administration to set climate or clean energy goals. These sections enable corporations to take federal agencies to court should they move to limit emissions or take other action that would reduce the utilization rate of federally permitted projects. These provisions could effectively protect the fossil fuel industry from any future efforts to reinstate, for example, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) powers to control pollution.
Potentially, the bill could tie the hands of future administrations to set climate goals like Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement on Climate Change – meaning that it would limit future climate action. Essentially, these provisions give corporations the power to sue federal agencies for any action that would affect the profitability of their federally permitted project. This doesn’t just apply to projects permitted after the bill passes, but all projects with any kind of federal permit.
The bill relies heavily on the idea that the market will boost renewables more than fossil fuels – but the planned project pipeline for the data center boom suggests that fossil fuels will win out
Clean energy advocates argue that “unleashing” renewable energy will allow the market to do the work of reducing fossil fuel use, given that renewable energy is the cheapest source of energy in the market. But the data center boom is already intentionally being planned in order to take advantage of existing gas infrastructure and bypass regulations. Tech giants, intent on building out AI infrastructure as fast as possible and at any cost, are planning possibly the largest expansion of electricity generation ever in this country. The data center buildout could potentially increase gas consumption in the U.S. power sector by over 40%. With these plans already in the works, it seems far more likely that the bill will further support gas buildout over supporting wind and solar power.
Any interstate gas pipelines needed to meet the massive increases in gas consumption these facilities will require will benefit from the bill’s provisions that gut environmental and community protections. For instance, communities would not be able to use the Clean Water Act or other protections to raise concerns about the planned Desert Southwest Expansion project, a $5 billion, 520-mile, 48-inch gas pipeline proposed to run from Texas through New Mexico to Arizona, where several large data centers are planned. It will all but ensure that another 2.3 billion cubic feet per day of gas, an amount similar to the entire gas consumption of the Netherlands, will be extracted from the Permian Basin and burned to generate power for AI.
The bill would not impact projects that intend to bypass federal permitting altogether by building in the gas basins themselves, as they won’t need interstate pipelines that require federal permitting. However, this additionally means that a large number of data centers will not be subject to the transmission cost reforms proposed in the bill, which are intended to ensure data centers pay the full cost of the transmission line upgrades they require. If the gas plants they build remain behind the fence to avoid paying for transmission upgrades, the bill will have only locked in more gas power.
The bill may not even reduce climate emissions
The theory (for those who hope this bill will help curb climate emissions) is that removing permitting barriers will boost solar, wind, and battery storage more than fossil fuels, thereby reducing climate emissions. But given current energy projections, and the ‘all of the above’ nature of the bill’s provisions, it is highly unlikely that the bill would achieve anything more than a small dent in emissions at best, at the cost of massive deregulation of the fossil fuel industry.
A review of two studies modeling the bill’s potential emissions impact exposes the epic failure this bill would be for the climate. Even in the best case, emissions reductions would leave us over 2.3 billion tons of CO2 short in 2040 of where we need to be. In the worst case, the models also show a potential net increase in emissions. And these models likely have not fully incorporated the massive surge in gas power plant capacity tied to the data center boom. Industry analysts project a 50% increase in U.S. power sector gas demand, driven primarily by AI data centers; the danger is that this bill could lock that in rather than mitigate it.
The bill is not a solution to long-term price increases
The American Petroleum Institute (API) and other proponents claim that the bill will reduce energy costs. However, their analysis doesn’t show a reduction in energy costs – it simply suggests that prices may not rise as high as they otherwise would. It still leaves U.S. households and businesses paying far more for energy than before – hardly a solution to the cost-of-living crisis.
As detailed in Oil Change International’s report from July this year, the expected rise in LNG exports over the next decade, along with burgeoning domestic demand from new gas plants fueling the data center boom, is widely seen as driving much higher prices in the 2030s and beyond. The Henry Hub price benchmark is expected to be 80% higher on average over the next decade than it has been over the past one. Continued reliance on gas – a finite energy source that is destroying our climate – is also making our lives costlier and riskier.
BAAJA is not a compromise – it’s what the fossil fuel industry wants
The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act is being presented as a “compromise,” but it is in fact a gift to the fossil fuel industry. It guts environmental and social protections that have, in some cases, enabled communities to protect themselves from polluting fossil fuel infrastructure; it is set to unleash gas power generation; it is likely to barely register, or quite possibly increase, climate emissions; and it would tie the hands of future administrations to take further climate action and enact other protections that would limit fossil fuel infrastructure to achieve the emissions reductions we need.
Additional resources the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA):
- Analysis
- Oil Change International: The Permitting Bill Is The Fossil Fuel Industry’s Climate Action Kill Switch
- Oil Change International: Senate permitting bill would be a gift to data centers and their massive gas buildout
- Center for Energy and Environmental Analysis (CEEA): Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Permitting Reform Legislation
- Earthjustice: The Impacts of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act of 2026
- Earthworks: Permitting Bill Text Would Strip Our Most Basic Federal Protections
- Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC): NRDC Assessment of BAAJA, the 2026 Permitting and Transmission Bill
- The Wilderness Society: 6 threats to public lands in the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act
- Opposition statements