Handling Challenging Questions about the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024

Description

Providing volunteers with the skills and resources to respond to questions gracefully is key to empowering all CCL volunteers to be successful advocates.

To help, this resource compiles some general guidance on how to best engage with others who have questions and critiques regarding CCL’s approach and one of the bills we are supporting. Read through the background recommendations below then click on any of the topics for possible background information and potential responses. If there is something missing, search CCL Community and ask your question on the forums. Frequently asked questions may be added below in the future.

Note: this resource was last updated September 20, 2024

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Usage Instructions

Background

This background information is also provided on the Engaging Challenging Conversations About The Energy Permitting Reform Act training page including a training video and slides.

Start with the main messages

When describing how the bill works, start by keeping your communications simple and high level. Here’s an “elevator pitch” you can use when first introducing and describing the Energy Permitting Reform Act:

“Right now, it takes too long to build and connect clean energy projects in America — but we need those clean energy projects to help us meet our climate goals. The Energy Permitting Reform Act will help get good clean energy projects up and running quickly, so we can stop the pollution that’s overheating our planet. It’s our best chance this Congress to put America on a path to significantly cutting our climate pollution.”

You can support this initial introduction with a few additional points:

It will reduce America’s climate pollution up to 25% by 2050, or 10% in a more modest scenario. That’s according to the most trusted climate and energy modelers in the business (Resources for the Future, Rocky Mountain Institute, Jesse Jenkins from Princeton University, Third Way) who analyzed the bill in the weeks after it was introduced.
The bill is backed by a diverse coalition of clean energy experts and climate leaders. This includes clean energy groups like the Solar Energy Industries Association, American Council on Renewable Energy, and American Clean Power Association, as well as climate champions in Congress like Sens. Chris Coons and Martin Heinrich.
This bill is the biggest opportunity to cut climate pollution in this Congress. CCL volunteers called, emailed, and met with congressional offices thousands of times over nearly two years, urging them to work on a comprehensive bipartisan package of clean energy permitting reform legislation, including many of clean energy friendly provisions that ended up in this bill. Let’s take this opportunity to lock in more progress toward lower climate pollution!

Do you need to respond?

This should always be your first question. There are some cases where your best option is not to respond. For instance, engaging with strong climate deniers is rarely productive, especially in a public setting. It can be best to ignore, or deflect, or quickly pivot back to your key message.

Also, there are national organizations that are firmly opposed to our type of climate solutions on both the right and the left. CCL’s national staff is working with many of these organizations and the relationships are probably as good as they can be — sometimes with an agreement to disagree. If you have questions about a particular organization, please contact Ben Pendergrass (ben@citizensclimatelobby.org) in the D.C. office.

That said, it can be OK to engage with people who have been influenced by an organization but are not central to it. If someone says something like, “I heard organization X says…”, feel free to engage on the topic, always being respectful of other organizations.

Online forums and email threads can be some of the worst places for dialogue. Don’t give in to the temptation to correct every person who has said something wrong on the Internet. Often it’s best just to let it go and focus on spreading your positive message.

Listen, Listen, Listen

People are much more likely to be open to what you have to say once they feel they have been listened to. You can help them feel heard by asking questions to make sure you understand their concerns properly. To help you engage with reflective listening, with any of the responses below we recommend you start by restating their question or comment so that you, and they, are sure you understand it. You can articulate places of agreement with their values and concerns when possible and use those to reframe the conversation (e.g., “It sounds to me like you want an effective solution.”). When possible, try to resonate or agree with their values (e.g., “I agree. Effectiveness is very important to me as well.”) You might continue with something like, “This may not satisfy you, but what I like about the bill is….”

There is much more ability to do this one-on-one or in a small group than during a large public talk, but in either case you can try to convey an honest curiosity and openness to what they are saying.

Context matters

How you engage is different during a one on one conversation, during a presentation, with the media, during a meeting with community leaders, or during a meeting with a Congressional office.

A one-on-one conversation allows for much deeper engagement, more of a chance to ask questions, and provide longer answers. With an audience of one you have the freedom to tailor your answers.

During a presentation or other public arena, you often have a diverse audience with different knowledge and beliefs. You want to be respectful and respond to people’s questions and concerns, but you don’t want to get off topic or into a back and forth argument. As described above, try to reframe the conversation around values and find places of agreement. To keep things on track, you might end a response with, “I’d be happy to talk more about this with you later.”

With a community leader or Congressional office, you want to do your best to understand concerns and respond when you can, but it can often be most valuable to seek areas of agreement and shared values rather than focus on disagreement about details.

Know Your Audience

It’s important to meet people where they are and connect as much as possible. Ideally, you are a trusted messenger with your audience and share values, culture and identity. For example, when speaking with a more conservative audience, consider framing your talk with values that many conservatives share: authority, loyalty, freedom and independence. When speaking with a left-leaning audience, consider frames based on justice, fairness, equality or forward progress.

Importantly, if you know you aren’t the ideal messenger, be mindful of your language to connect with your audience’s values and viewpoint and/or think of ways that you could bring someone in from a trusted place in the community to have a more in-depth conversation.

Questions and answers:

CCL’s endorsement of this bill departs from CCL’s mission / doesn’t fit with CCL’s values.

As a climate organization, our primary goal is to stop the pollution that’s overheating the planet. This legislation goes a long way toward doing that, and it represents the best opportunity to do so in the current Congress.

You can also reference the responses below to emissions cuts or the necessity of bipartisan compromise.

I saw some numbers that this bill would increase emissions as much as adding 165 coal plants.

We’ve seen those numbers too, but they’re incorrect. Those estimates were based on a flawed estimate that came out from a group called Symons Public Affairs in a matter of hours after the bill text was released. Quality, thorough analysis takes much longer. Thankfully, the best climate and energy modelers in the business (Resources for the Future, RMI, Jesse Jenkins from Princeton University, and Third Way) did put their heads together to accurately analyze the impacts of this bill. In every scenario they modeled, they found that the bill will lead to a net reduction in America’s emissions. In the most likely scenario, their analysis suggests we’ll see a 10% reduction in America’s total climate pollution by 2050, but it could be as much as a 25% cut.

This isn’t a good compromise. It’s important to speed up clean energy deployment, but we shouldn’t do that with a bill that increases emissions.

We agree. Expert analysis finds that, in both low and high range scenarios, the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is expected to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That means that the huge emissions cuts from the clean energy and transmission provisions in the legislation far outweigh any slight emissions increase from the fossil fuel provisions.

This assessment comes from the best climate and energy modelers in the business: Resources for the Future, RMI, Jesse Jenkins from Princeton University, and Third Way. They released their thorough modeling on the emissions impact of the legislation on Sept. 5, 2024, and you can see the aggregation of their modeling here.

Can’t we lobby to remove the fossil fuel portions of the bill?

As a climate organization, of course we would prefer to see legislation move through Congress that focuses exclusively on clean energy, without provisions that support any more fossil fuel use. Bills like that do exist — but they don’t have any bipartisan support, and therefore they have no current chance of becoming law.

Bills like these are where CCL’s nonpartisan rubber meets the road of Congress. We have to balance our goal to advance climate-friendly legislation with the political realities of a divided Congress. In the case of the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, the fossil fuel provisions are what’s encouraging Republican lawmakers to support the legislation and be willing to vote for it. If these provisions were removed, the bill would have no chance of advancing this Congress. In fact, during the Senate committee markup of this bill, an amendment was introduced to remove certain fossil fuel measures, and Democratic and Republican committee members alike voted down that amendment, understanding that the bill is delicately balanced to appeal to both sides of the aisle.

As the bill currently stands, Democratic and Republican lawmakers have reached a compromise they can both support, and the outcome of the bill will be good for the climate. Our D.C. staff will continue to work with relevant offices on language changes that could further strengthen the bill, and our volunteers will continue to build support for it overall, but no, we will not specifically lobby to remove the fossil fuel provisions of the bill because that would kill the entire bill.

All these fossil fuel provisions will make climate change worse, so CCL shouldn’t support this bill.

It’s important to look at the legislation as a whole. Expert analysis finds that the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is expected to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall. That means that the huge emissions cuts from the clean energy and transmission provisions in the legislation far outweigh any slight emissions increase from the fossil fuel provisions.

More oil and gas leases will lead to more fossil fuel use, so CCL shouldn’t support this bill.

Expert analysis finds that the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 is expected to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall. That means that the huge emissions cuts from the clean energy and transmission provisions in the legislation far outweigh any slight emissions increase from the fossil fuel provisions.

But even before that modeling on the bill was released, we had insight into this question because the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 included similar provisions to those in the Energy Permitting Reform Act that require federal oil and gas lease sales. Energy modeling analyses projected that these IRA provisions would only result in a small increase in climate pollution. That’s in part because oil and gas companies are already sitting on a lot of unused leases. Holding a land lease auction doesn’t mean that all the land will be purchased, or that the land that’s leased will all be developed for oil and gas extraction. So the idea that the leases themselves will lead to more fossil fuel extraction and use is not necessarily the case.

If we don’t pass this bill, America won’t export any more natural gas. We shouldn’t support it.

This is incorrect. America is currently the world’s biggest natural gas exporter, and LNG exports have continued to increase during 2024. America’s LNG exports are likely to continue to increase whether or not the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 passes. In fact, if the bill doesn’t pass, we are likely to see increased LNG exports without any of the clean energy infrastructure and transmission that this bill would support, which lead to huge emissions cuts. The climate would be better off if Congress passed the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, even with the LNG provisions included.

President Biden banned LNG exports. This bill overturns that ban, so I can’t support it.

This is incorrect. In January of 2024, President Biden’s administration temporarily paused LNG exports that were pending approval. The administration itself planned to end the pause early in 2025. But in July, a federal court blocked that pause. That means weeks before the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 was ever introduced, President Biden’s LNG export pause was already inactive. Also, note that the pause never banned LNG export projects that were already approved or under construction — in fact, Reuters reports that the U.S. has actually continued to increase LNG exports on prior approvals. So there is no “ban on new LNG exports” for the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 to overturn.

These fossil fuel provisions are exactly what Project 2025 calls for.

Project 2025 does make references to fossil fuel development, but trying to connect Project 2025 to this bill is an attempt to discourage people who identify on the political left from supporting the Energy Permitting Reform Act.

At CCL, we pride ourselves on following the facts and respecting the experts. The expert climate and energy modelers who have analyzed this bill find that it will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall. That’s our goal as a climate organization.

A five month time limit for lawsuits is way too short. This will harm communities and should be longer.

This bill shortens the statute of limitations for bringing a lawsuit specifically about the decision to issue a permit or not, and there is plenty of advance notice on permitting decisions. Communities still have plenty of time to bring lawsuits against projects themselves for any impacts.

This bill lets companies dump toxic waste on federal land.

It sounds like you’re referencing the legislation’s mining provision. Mining milling activities, such as waste disposal and processing of ore, must still be included in mining plans that undergo environmental reviews, so this provision of the Energy Permitting Reform Act does not give mining companies a blank check — the environmental impacts will still be considered. It’s also important to note that the mining language in the bill was a Democratic provision that not only addresses the milling siting but also funds clean-up efforts for hard rock mining.

This bill will harm frontline communities by allowing more fossil fuel development.

America's current fossil-fueled energy system disproportionately harms communities of color, low-income communities, and frontline communities. There are communities breathing air pollution from coal and gas power plants today.

The unfortunate reality is that most of the fossil fuel facilities and infrastructure aided by the Energy Permitting Reform Act will be built with or without this bill. But the best way to stop fossil fuels is to bury them under an avalanche of clean energy. The faster we start building the necessary infrastructure to transition to solar and wind farms and connect more clean energy to America's power grid, the faster we can begin to improve the air quality and therefore people's health in those frontline communities. By loosening the bottleneck slowing down clean energy, the Energy Permitting Reform Act helps make that happen.

In CCL's view, if we have the opportunity to pass a bill that will significantly reduce climate pollution overall, we feel it's important to take that opportunity. However, environmental justice groups should have a seat at the table in discussing potential changes and improvements to the bill to protect frontline communities, for example by adding provisions to improve community involvement in the permitting process.