WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Senator Angus King (I-Maine), a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, today delivered a forceful speech on the Senate Floor explaining the need for pragmatic, realistic, and rapid permitting reform to reach America’s clean energy goals – calling on energy and environmental organizations to break free of entrenched stances. In his comprehensive address, where he detailed his decades of experience in renewable energy and conservation, he cited the words of Abraham Lincoln in seeking to reset the tone in DC, “we must disenthrall ourselves … and we will save the planet.”

King began his speech by highlighting four key lessons he learned from his decades of experience in the renewable energy industry:

“I learned some lessons when I was working in the field of developing alternative or renewable energy. The most important lesson is there’s no free lunch when it comes to energy. There are always costs and benefits. There are always impacts that some people think are terrific, other people think are not so good. There are always trade-offs,” Senator King began. “The second lesson I learned is that you may have global goals, renewable energy, but local impacts, and you often have a controversy about a particular project. The third thing I learned is that change is hard. Everybody’s for progress, nobody’s for change. Change is difficult, whether it’s for a local community, a state, or a nation.

“The fourth thing, permitting is hard,” added Senator King. “People have to understand that this is a major, a major change that’s going to require trade-offs, that’s going to require us to make decisions and to understand, again, to go back to my basic premise, there’s no free lunch.”

He continued by laying out the serious threats of climate change, and the challenge that presents the country:

“We are now undertaking the largest and most far-reaching energy transition in human history,” Senator King continued. “The transition to fossil fuels took about 150 years, going back to around 1800. You can see the graph, it goes up, but we really got into the real heart of the fossil fuel economy in the mid-20th century – 150 years. We’re talking about transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables over 15 years. Not 150, but 15. We have to grasp that this is an enormous undertaking, and it’s going to involve change.

“So, we are literally in a race with climate change. That’s why it’s going to have to happen in the next 10, 15, 20 years, because the consequences of not doing it are catastrophic, and we’re already seeing that. I think that we’ve reached a point where most Americans realize that climate change is real. The fishermen in Maine know it. The loggers know it. The farmers know it. The people who work with the land and the sea and the atmosphere understand what’s happening. They see it. The animals know it. They know what’s happening. And that’s why we have to make this transition. That’s why it’s so important that we make this transition, and it’s got to be fast. We don’t have time to do it for over 150 years, or even 50 years. It’s a huge change. It’s going to involve dislocation, and it’s going to involve trade-offs.”

Senator King went on to explain how the clean energy and climate challenge is only possible with tradeoffs:

“However, and this is what I want to really stress, you can’t be in favor of electrification, you can’t be in favor of renewable power, you can’t be in favor of electric vehicles if you’re not in favor of mining the lithium that you need for the batteries. Or covering a lot of farmers’ fields with solar panels. You can’t have those things without paying a price,” said Senator King. “It would be nice if you could. I would love it if I could wave a wand and say we’re going to get rid of fossil fuels and we’re going to have an all-renewable future. Yes, I want that. But we have to recognize that in order to get there, there are some things we have to do that, heretofore, we really haven’t been very likely to like. 

“Geography is a problem. Technology is a problem. This will require trade-offs. But we have to keep in mind that we’re talking about a global goal. We’re talking about literally saving the Earth, but we have to understand that there are going to be costs to do so.”

The Senator concluded his remarks with a direct appeal to the environmental community, urging them support the necessary tradeoffs to fight climate change:

“Historically, and if you go back to the beginning of the environmental movement in the 60’s and 70’s and lord help me, I was there, the environmental movement was about stopping things. The environmental movement began with a proposed oil refinery on our coast. People wanted to stop it because they didn’t think it was the appropriate place. But if you think about that, a lot of the environmental movement has been about stopping things, stopping projects, stopping highways, stopping whatever. What we have to do now is think about facilitating getting things done in order to get to the renewable future that we want,” emphasized Senator King. “I’m not saying lower the standards, but I’m saying the process itself should not be used as a weapon to undermine projects that are necessary to achieve our ultimate climate goal.”

“Lincoln said ‘the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty. Therefore, we must rise with the occasion. As our cases new, we also must think anew and act anew.’ And then here’s the key line, ‘we must disenthrall ourselves,’ Lincoln said, ‘and then we shall save our country.’ We must disenthrall ourselves and save our country. It means think in new and different ways, let go of the way you thought about these kinds of issues in the past. Disenthrall ourselves, Mr. President, and then we shall save our planet,” Senator King concluded.  

As a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator King has advocated for climate solutions that support Maine communities and has been one of the Senate’s most vocal advocates for improving energy technologies and development as a way to unlock America’s clean energy future. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on National Parks, Senator King is also among the Senate’s loudest voices advocating for conserving public lands and encouraging outdoor recreation. Senator King helped lead the passage the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) into law; the legislation includes the Restore Our Parks Act – a bill led by Senator King – and the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF) Permanent Funding Act. Over the course of his time in the Blaine House, Governor King was responsible for conserving more land across Maine than all Governors before him combined.

Senator King’s full speech can be watched HERE and a transcript can be read below.

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This is an unusual set of comments for me because I will start out with personal history which I hope will make sense in terms of what I want to address. I started working in the alternative energy industry in 1983. When I say industry, actually very small company developing hydro projects in Maine and New England. We then worked on biomass projects. Later on, worked on wind power. And also the development of large-scale conservation. My professional life has largely been occupied with energy, and particularly with renewable energy.

At the same time, I have a deep history in Maine in environmental matters. I represented the environmental community in Maine before the Maine legislature in the 1970’s – if you can believe anybody around here was still doing things in the 1970s. I also as Governor was very active in conservation matters and am proud to say during my eight years as Governor of Maine we put aside and set into conservation and protection status more land than in the prior 175-year history of Maine combined. This has been a passion of mine, the protection of the environment, for my entire life. 

So, history of renewable energy development and also environmental advocacy. I learned some lessons when I was working in the field of developing alternative or renewable energy. The most important lesson is there’s no free lunch when it comes to energy. There are always costs and benefits. There are always impacts that some people think are terrific, other people think are not so good. There are always trade-offs. In fact, I will never forget going to hearings on hydro projects and having people object, saying ‘we like hydro but not on our river, not on this side. By the way, we don’t really think you should be ruining the rivers. Why don’t you go do wind power?’ Low and behold, 20 years later, I worked in the area of wind development, wind power, and people came to our hearings and said, ‘we don’t really need to spoil the view in our mountains, do more hydro.’ I’m not making that up, Mr. President. I actually lived that kind of sort of conflict. 

The second lesson I learned is that you may have global goals, renewable energy, but local impacts, and you often have a controversy about a particular project. The third thing I learned is that change is hard. Everybody’s for progress, nobody’s for change. Change is difficult, whether it’s for a local community, a state, or a nation.

The fourth thing, permitting is hard. Getting permits for renewable energy projects were lengthy, time-consuming and expensive. This was a serious learning that I had during this period, that if you want to develop even the most beneficial project, you’re going to have to go through an often arduous permitting process, and somebody isn’t going to like it. Always will be trade-offs. 

These were sporadic, small projects, and indeed in New England today, and I just checked this morning, about 10% of our electricity comes from renewables. This is after almost 40 years of development of these projects – about 10%. We’re now talking about a transition in energy to fully renewable future. Well, if you do the math that means 10 times the amount of renewable energy development that we’ve done in the last 40 years, in the next 10 to 15 years. 

People have to understand that this is a major, a major change that’s going to require trade-offs, that’s going to require us to make decisions and to understand, again, to go back to my basic premise, there’s no free lunch. 

We are now undertaking the largest and most far-reaching energy transition in human history. The transition to fossil fuels took about 150 years, going back to around 1800. You can see the graph, it goes up, but we really got into the real heart of the fossil fuel economy in the mid-20th century – 150 years. We’re talking about transitioning away from fossil fuels to renewables over 15 years. Not 150, but 15. We have to grasp that this is an enormous undertaking, and it’s going to involve change.

So, we are literally in a race with climate change. That’s why it’s going to have to happen in the next 10, 15, 20 years, because the consequences of not doing it are catastrophic, and we’re already seeing that. I think that we’ve reached a point where most Americans realize that climate change is real. The fishermen in Maine know it. The loggers know it. The farmers know it. The people who work with the land and the sea and the atmosphere understand what’s happening. They see it. The animals know it. They know what’s happening. And that’s why we have to make this transition. That’s why it’s so important that we make this transition, and it’s got to be fast. We don’t have time to do it for over 150 years, or even 50 years. It’s a huge change. It’s going to involve dislocation, and it’s going to involve trade-offs. 

That’s really the question that I want to address today. There’s broad agreement, I believe, that we need change, that we need to develop responses to the global climate change crisis. There’s certainly agreement in the environmental community, as far as that question is concerned. There’s nobody in the environmental community that I know that doubts climate change or doubts the necessity of taking dramatic action to meet it. Climate change is as real as it gets, and we have to address it. How do we address it? Non-fossil fuel electrification. If we do that, we can address the CO2. 

We’re talking about emissions of CO2. Is it a problem? Well, the average over the past million years of CO2 in the atmosphere is about 280 parts-per-million.  It varies up and down. People say it’s a natural cycle. Yeah, it varies up and down about 250, 300 parts-per-million. It’s now at about 420 parts-per-million it’s gone up 20 in the last two, three years. The last time we were over 400 parts-per-million of CO2 in the atmosphere, the oceans were 60 feet higher. We are in uncharted territory in human history right now, and we have to deal with it, and we have to deal with it in a hurry. 

Where’s all that CO2 coming from? Well, here’s a rough breakdown of the CO2 budget, about 30% from the generation of electricity – 30% to 35%. Another 30% to 35% from transportation, the combustion of fossil fuels in vehicles. The last 30% to 35% comes from space heat and industrial use. So that’s the budget we have to deal with. How do we tackle that? Electronification with electricity from renewable sources. 

If you have an electric vehicle and you’re feeling really good about saving the environment, you’re not saving the environment if the power for that electric vehicle comes from fossil fuels. You’re saving the environment if the power for that electric vehicle comes from renewables. So that’s what we’re talking about. But there are problems with renewables. Remember, I said I worked in the wind power business. The wind doesn’t blow all the time. The sun doesn’t shine all the time. The term is intermittency. That’s the issue, that’s the issue with renewables, is intermittency, the fact that there has to be something to supply power when the sun doesn’t shine, the wind doesn’t blow. The answer to that is storage. 

Mr. President, the real green new deal is energy storage. If we can solve that problem in a cost-effective way, then we really can have a realistic, all-renewable future, because what you have with energy storage plus renewables is essentially baseload power without CO2, and that’s really the direction that we’re moving in. 

However, and this is what I want to really stress, you can’t be in favor of electrification, you can’t be in favor of renewable power, you can’t be in favor of electric vehicles if you’re not in favor of mining the lithium that you need for the batteries. Or covering a lot of farmers’ fields with solar panels. You can’t have those things without paying a price. It would be nice if you could. I would love it if I could wave a wand and say we’re going to get rid of fossil fuels and we’re going to have an all-renewable future. Yes, I want that. But we have to recognize that in order to get there, there are some things we have to do that, heretofore, we really haven’t been very likely to like. 

One of the other issues is renewable power is a lot of the renewable power is in places where there aren’t people. So we have to get that renewable power to the places where there are people. You know what that means? Transmission, new transmission lines, new rights of way. People aren’t going to be too crazy about that, but you can’t have a renewable energy future without having transmission. And you can’t have a renewable energy future without having batteries or some storage technology that, chances are, is going to require minerals and Earth minerals that you have to mine. 

Geography is a problem. Technology is a problem. This will require trade-offs. But we have to keep in mind that we’re talking about a global goal. We’re talking about literally saving the Earth, but we have to understand that there are going to be costs to do so. 

So, let’s talk about permitting. One of my favorite stories is when God came to Moses and said, Moses, I have good news and bad news. Moses says, ‘God, give me the good news.’ God says, ‘I’m going to empower you to part the waters of the Red Sea, allow my people to go free, then have the waters come back and inundate the Pharaoh’s army.’

Moses says, ‘that’s wonderful, God. What’s the bad news?’ God says, ‘you have to prepare the environmental impact statement.’ We’ve got to understand that permitting it is part of the process of going to a renewable future. Now, when I was governor of Maine I had a very clear policy – no diminution, no cutting, no cutting corners of environmental standards, but I wanted the most timely and predictable environmental permitting process in the country. 

I don’t think those two things are in any way mutually exclusive. When I talk here and work with my colleagues here about permitting reform, I’m talking, we’re talking, about the process, not the standards. We’re not talking about lowering the standards, saying you can emit more or you don’t have to meet clean water standards. I sit at Edmund Muskie’s desk in my office. Lightning would strike me if I was lowering the water quality or air quality standards. But we’ve got to talk about a process that’s timely and predictable – predictable. 

The estimates are that to permit a mine in this country takes about ten years, about ten years. Mr. President, we don’t have ten years to spend on a permitting process if we’re going to solve this problem in time to save the country and the planet. We’ve got to figure out how to do this in a more timely way.

How are we going to do it? I don’t know the details of the various discussions that are going on here, but I have some thoughts that I’ve suggested to Senator Manchin and others. One is one-stop shopping. You shouldn’t have to go to five agencies. Go to one agency in charge of the permitting process and let them lead it. Don’t make the applicant go to five, six, seven different agencies. 

Secondly, deadlines, real deadlines, deadlines that mean something. So that the agencies, if it says 180 days, they’ve got to have a decision in 180 days. Eisenhower retook Europe in 11 months. There’s no reason that we can’t get decisions out of some of these agencies in less than a year. So deadlines and reasonable time frames, I think, is part of this process. Accelerated appeal process, where an appeal from an environmental decision on a renewable energy project or related to a renewable energy future can go to the courts, get a fair hearing, but in a timely basis, not go through a long process that takes, again, years. 

Another suggestion I have, this goes back to my experience of working on renewable energy projects, there should be credit given for the nature of the project you’re doing. In other words, if you’re doing a project that is going to contribute to the solution of the problem of global climate change, you shouldn’t be treated as a strip mall. Some weight should be given to the import and the value, the environmental value of the project vis-à-vis the incidental environmental cost and I could be criticized for using the word incidental but the small costs that may be involved in getting there. 

I think that’s got to be how we approach this whole permitting question. So why am I here today? I’m here today to talk to my friends in the environmental community. And I do mean friends, people I’ve worked with all my life. To have them change the way they think about the environmental process and what they have conventionally and historically thought about this kind of action. 

Historically, and if you go back to the beginning of the environmental movement in the 60’s and 70’s and lord help me, I was there, the environmental movement was about stopping things. The environmental movement began with a proposed oil refinery on our coast. People wanted to stop it because they didn’t think it was the appropriate place. But if you think about that, a lot of the environmental movement has been about stopping things, stopping projects, stopping highways, stopping whatever. What we have to do now is think about facilitating getting things done in order to get to the renewable future that we want. 

I think that’s a very, very important way to look at this process. You can’t be for EVs if you’re against mining lithium. Let me give you just a couple of numbers on what I’m talking about. Copper – remember I talked about transmission – copper, copper wires to transmit electricity.  The estimate is we’re going to need as much copper annually by 2050 as has been mined in the entire prior history of the world. One year we’re going to need that much. 

The estimate is that in order to achieve our climate goals, we’re going to have to triple, triple the grid, the wires, the rights of way, the towers, the grid infrastructure has to be tripled in order to absorb the new and transmitted and distribute the new energy that’s going to be needed. If you have electric vehicles, you’re going to need more wires to get the power. That’s going to be a huge increase. Between doubling and tripling is the estimate of the strength of the grid.

The international energy agency, not me and not some commercial group, but the international energy agency – says that by 2040 – that’s not that long from now, barely over 15 years, we’re going to need 42 times the amount of lithium that we have; 25 times more graphite; 21 times more cobalt; 19 times more nickel, 7 times more rare earth elements. 

We have two choices, Mr. President. We can buy those things from other countries, particularly countries that may be potential adversaries. Do we really want to be dependent on China for this kind of essential material to our environmental future? I don’t think so. But if we’re going to say we don’t want to import it, we’ve got to get it out of the ground here. And we can’t spend ten years deciding it. 

I’m not saying lower the standards, but I’m saying the process itself should not be used as a weapon to undermine projects that are necessary to achieve our ultimate climate goal.

Mr. President, this is a change. This is a change of thinking that’s required by the reality that we face. And I’m here because I want to face that reality. I want to do something about climate change. I want to take the action that’s necessary, not token actions but the real deal. But it’s going to involve these enormous commitments of time, effort, and money and also our understanding particularly in the environmental community that there’s no free lunch. 

On December 2, 1862, Abraham Lincoln came to this congress to talk about the progress of the Civil War. His problem was that the Congress was being the Congress. They were doing politics, and they really he didn’t feel were taking it seriously or understood the massive change that was sweeping over the country. And at the end of that speech, the afternoon of December 2, 1862, Abraham Lincoln gave what I think is still the best analysis of how you deal with change that I’ve ever encountered. And I think it applies exactly in this situation. 

Lincoln said ‘the dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty. Therefore, we must rise with the occasion. As our cases new, we also must think anew and act anew.’ And then here’s the key line, ‘we must disenthrall ourselves,’ Lincoln said, ‘and then we shall save our country.’ We must disenthrall ourselves and save our country. It means think in new and different ways, let go of the way you thought about these kinds of issues in the past. Disenthrall ourselves, Mr. President, and then we shall save our planet.