WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Senator Angus King today continued expressing urgency for streamlining the permitting reform process, so that clean energy projects can be built responsibly in support of America’s race against climate change. In a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, King questioned Mark Compton, the Executive Director of the American Exploration & Mining Association, about the important role permitting reform plays in a clean energy future and how to best streamline the permitting process to achieve this goal.

King began his remarks by laying out the global impact of climate change.

“I want to just put this hearing in a little bit of perspective. We're not talking about rolling back mining regulations or shortening statute of limitations in order to have somebody make more money. We're trying to beat climate change, and we're in a race, and it's a race in a matter of months and years. I just heard on the radio this morning that glaciers in Switzerland have declined 10% in the last two years. That's astounding if you think about that, these are glaciers that have been there for thousands of years. So, this is an urgent environmental priority. And it strikes me that one of the problems is that we're treating this as sort of environmental growth or environmental protection,” began Senator King.

He continued by highlighting the connection between green energy and permitting reform.

“Green energy is over here, and permitting reform is over here. And they're not [merely] related – they're intimately related. For example, one of the things we haven't talked about today is grid access. We have environmental projects, wind and solar projects that can't get on the grid because of the inadequacy of the grid. Well that means there's going to have to be transmission. I was at a meeting last week on transmission. There are three major transmission projects in the west, the shortest of which has been at it 21 years from the time of the inception of the project to the time it's going to go online. The longer, I think, is about 25 years. That's another example of exactly what we're talking about,” said Senator King.

King then asked Compton about streamlining the mining permit process.

“So, I guess what I would like, and perhaps we could take this for the record, is some specificity about what makes it take 14 years to do a mine. In other words, how much is NEPA, how much is local permitting, how much is state, how much is litigation? Do you see what I'm asking? Mr. Compton it would help us, I think, if we knew exactly where the bottlenecks were, and then we can move to try to address them. By the way, the comment about litigation reminded me of Jarndyce versus Jarndyce, Dickens' famous case in Bleak House, where the lawyers passed the litigation on from generation to generation. You said half of a person's life could be spent permitting one project. How about the role of state and local permitting? Because we're all talking about federal permitting and NEPA. But aren't state and local permitting issues also at stake here,” asked Senator King.

“They absolutely are. And we need better coordination between federal and state and local permitting and being able to, when one or the other has completed analysis, for the others, to be able to use that analysis. But you're absolutely right. If we are truly going to tackle climate change, we have to get serious about this now. And to your point about the various phases of mining in the mining lifecycle, every bit of those phases need to be constricted. Exploration can take up to ten years or more before we even get to the start of permitting. Having the USGS doing additional research and mapping and sharing that information with mining companies can help shorten that period of time,” responded Compton.

“That’s a good example of it. I think what we need is a little bit of urgency on this issue, because we are in a race with the warming climate and the effects, the catastrophic effects that's going to have on us,” concluded Senator King.

As a member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Senator King has advocated for climate solutions that deliver on the clean energy potential of last year’s historic Inflation Reduction Act. He has repeatedly emphasized the importance of permitting reform to deliver carefully considered, timely approvals of sorely-needed clean energy projects. In addition to a recent discussion with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, he has stressed the importance of streamlining and speeding project timelines while maintaining environmental standards to the Secretaries of Energy and Interior.

###