What I missed last week
My roundup last week was inevitably inadequate in capturing all the great writing on BAAJA. A (still non-exhaustive!) list of some more pieces worth reading includes:
A magisterial but highly readable digest of the main problems BAAJA takes on, and the mechanics of how the bill addresses them, by Aidan Mackenzie at IFP
A discussion of how a (potentially short-term) ebb in utilities’ political influence created a window for BAAJA’s oversight provisions, by Catherine Boudreau at Latitude Media
A deep dive into why reforming Clean Water Act Section 401 matters so much for transmission and hydropower by Marc Levitt at Breakthrough Institute
A statement from 21 Republican state governors in support of BAAJA
Daniel Palken and Pavan Venkatakrishnan breaking down the bill with Milan Singh of The Argument
Daniel Palken again breaking down BAAJA with David Roberts at Volts
A “hard look” (pun intended?) at BAAJA – I don’t agree with all of it, but I appreciate the thoughtfulness – by Holly Bender of the Sierra Club:
“If Congress fails to get this right, it could mean continued reliance on fossil fuels, higher costs for families, and ever-worsening extreme weather events”
Senator Whitehouse on why unlocking clean energy matters so much from an affordability perspective, on Jigar Shah’s Energy Empire podcast:
“...Folks are [...] certainly noticing what their electric bills are now….And it’s not that complicated to understand how the generation stack works. It’s not that complicated to understand that when a gigawatt of clean power gets delayed or removed, then you have to have a gigawatt of something else to meet demand. And if that happens to be fossil fuel, which it always does … you can actually track additional consumer costs”
Jigar Shah and Jane Flegal on many BAAJA topics, including what “remand without vacatur” actually means, and why BAAJA’s fair share provisions go so much further than expected in putting data centers on the hook, on Latitude Media’s Open Circuit.
- https://www.abundanceandgrowth.org/p/a-bigger-better-baaja
- https://ifp.org/how-the-permitting-deal-works/
- https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/how-monopoly-utilities-lost-influence-in-washington/
- https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/the-unmistakable-need-for-baajas
- https://www.rga.org/statement-republican-governors-support-permitting-reform/
- https://www.theargumentmag.com/p/inside-the-senates-baaja-blast-with
- https://www.volts.wtf/p/whats-up-with-the-new-federal-permitting
- https://www.sierraclub.org/articles/2026/10/hard-look-what-s-400-page-permitting-reform-bill
- https://energyempirepodcast.substack.com/p/senator-whitehouse-on-why-democrats
- https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/open-circuit-clean-energy-loves-the-permitting-bill-green-groups-hate-it/