Senators are scheduled to vote about 5:30 p.m. Eastern on whether to begin debate on a bipartisan package that would rewrite environmental reviews, shorten lawsuit windows and require large data centers to pay for the power they use.
The Senate is scheduled to take its first formal vote on a long-sought permitting package at about 5:30 p.m. Eastern on Monday, a test of whether a deal written by the Republican and Democratic leaders of two committees can survive the midterm results and criticism from some environmental groups.
The Senate Daily Press said the chamber will return Monday at 3 p.m. and resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 2347, a House-passed bill being used as the vehicle for the permitting legislation. At about 5:30 p.m., senators will vote on cloture on that motion to proceed — a 60-vote threshold, and the first procedural hurdle to beginning debate. The text senators are being asked to take up is S. 5653, the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, introduced on Sept. 30 by Sens. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Mike Lee of Utah, the Republican chairs of the Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources Committees, and Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, the committees’ Democratic ranking members.
On Saturday, the four sponsors released a substitute amendment that they said made “clarifying, conforming, and technical edits” in response to feedback since September.
“This substitute amendment preserves the foundation of the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, while making targeted changes based on feedback from our members and stakeholders to further build support,” Senator Capito said. “I urge the swift passage of BAAJA to make life more affordable for American families.”
Senator Lee said the sponsors had “spent months working across party lines on both sides of Capitol Hill and with President Trump to deliver permitting reform that makes it easier to build in America.” He added, “Our permitting system takes too long, costs too much, and leaves too much uncertainty for the people trying to build what our country needs. We have an opportunity to lower costs for American families, and get America building again.”
Senator Whitehouse said the manager’s amendment reflected “thoughtful feedback” from “Senate and House colleagues, environmental and labor organizations, and Tribal leaders.” He said it was time to pass the bill “so we can lower costs, juice the clean energy economy, build big things again in America, reduce pollution, and create tons of new well-paying union jobs.”
Senator Heinrich said he had “worked hard to incorporate the feedback we’ve heard from Tribes and New Mexicans.” The bill, he said, “will help lower energy costs, strengthen Tribal consultation, and create more good-paying jobs. It also makes sure data centers pay for the energy they use and the grid upgrades they cause, instead of passing those costs on to New Mexico families.”
What the bill would change
Summaries by Holland & Knight and by the law firm Goldberg Segalla describe a wide rewrite of the National Environmental Policy Act and of related permitting and judicial-review rules.
The bill would state in statute that NEPA is procedural and does not require any particular environmental outcome. It would narrow the definition of a “major federal action,” the trigger for review, including by adding exclusions such as transmission and pipeline upgrades within existing rights-of-way, and it would expand the use of categorical exclusions. Agencies would face firmer deadlines, including a requirement that a lead agency issue a record of decision within 45 days of a published environmental impact statement, Goldberg Segalla reported.
Lawsuits challenging NEPA reviews would have to be filed within 150 days, down from the six-year period that generally applies under the Administrative Procedure Act. Standing would generally be limited to people who filed a sufficiently detailed comment and who can allege direct harm. The ordinary remedy would be a remand to the agency rather than vacatur of a permit, with a correction deadline of no more than 180 days, the summaries say. Challenges would go to the federal appeals court for the circuit where the project will be built.
A separate “project certainty” title would generally restrict agencies from rescinding, suspending or materially altering permits in effect on or after Sept. 16, 2026, except in specified circumstances such as court orders, legal violations, fraud or urgent harm, Holland & Knight reported. On the grid, the bill would expand the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s backstop siting authority for qualifying interstate transmission lines and would direct FERC to revise transmission pricing for large computational loads. It would establish state-level protections so that the cost of serving data centers and other high-density computing loads of at least 20 megawatts is not shifted onto other customers.
The package also reaches the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. Holland & Knight said tribal government-to-government consultation would be “melded into the public engagement procedures offered all other governmental and non-governmental interest groups,” with specific protocols for projects on reservations and other Indian lands, staged deadlines for identifying historic properties, and a 150-day window to challenge historic-preservation decisions.
What it would mean in California
Those changes would land on a state with a long queue of federally reviewed projects: high-voltage transmission to move renewable power, offshore wind planning along the Central Coast, high-speed rail in the Central Valley, and forest-thinning work on federal land.
Shorter review clocks and broader categorical exclusions could speed transmission upgrades in existing corridors and interconnection work that utilities say is a bottleneck — including generation meant to serve data centers. The cost-allocation language is the provision Senator Heinrich has highlighted as protecting households from paying for someone else’s load. Whether it would fully keep those costs off California bills would depend on follow-on rules at FERC and the state, which Holland & Knight noted would determine many commercial effects.
High-speed rail has spent years in environmental review and in court. A 150-day filing window and a preference for remand rather than vacatur would not erase those past fights, but they would change the rules for future federal approvals the project still needs. Forest-management authorizations would also face the shorter lawsuit window, Holland & Knight reported.
Tribal consultation is one of the sharpest points of disagreement. Senator Heinrich says the substitute strengthens it. Holland & Knight’s reading is that consultation would be folded into a broader public-engagement process with tighter clocks. The Environmental Protection Information Center, a Northern California group, urged supporters to write Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff — both members of the Environment and Public Works Committee, with Mr. Padilla also on Energy and Natural Resources — and ask them to seek “substantial amendments,” arguing that the bill would weaken protections for public lands, water quality, wildlife and tribal consultation under NEPA, the Clean Water Act, the Endangered Species Act and the National Historic Preservation Act.
The criticism, and the vote
Since the election, some groups that the sponsors had hoped to keep onside have said they cannot accept the bill as written. The Sierra Club, in a Nov. 6 statement, said it “cannot support this legislation without fundamental changes.” The group said the bill would help transmission and could reduce emissions, but that those gains did not justify what it described as weaker tribal consultation, Clean Water Act safeguards and Endangered Species Act review, or the loss of vacatur as a remedy when a court finds that a project was approved unlawfully. “The Sierra Club cannot support this bill as currently written,” Executive Director Loren Blackford said.
Rep. Jared Huffman of San Rafael, who is in line to become chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, told Inside Climate News and Living on Earth that the Senate package had been “cut behind closed doors by four people” and “written largely by the oil and gas industry,” and that Democrats should use their incoming House majority to seek a different deal. Those are his characterizations. The four sponsors describe the same text as a bipartisan compromise aimed at faster building and lower costs, reached with colleagues in both chambers and, Senator Lee said, with President Trump.
A review of official news releases from Senators Padilla and Schiff as of Saturday found no public statement on how either would vote Monday.
If cloture on the motion to proceed is invoked, the Senate would still have to debate, amend and pass a final text, and the House would have to agree, before any of the California projects affected by the bill would see a new set of rules. Monday’s vote decides only whether that process begins.
Rosalind Achterberg covers the Senate Environment and Public Works and Energy and Natural Resources committees, from permitting and water law to nominations and the federal lands that cover nearly half of California, for the Inquirer’s Energy & Environment desk. More from Rosalind Achterberg
