Millions of Americans’ utility bills have risen drastically over the past few years. As companies build data centers and factories and Americans switch to driving electric vehicles and install heat pumps in their homes, demand will continue to rise. Such energy inflation is particularly harmful to lower-income and fixed-income Americans as energy costs make up a growing proportion of their household budget.
The status quo federal permitting process in the United States delays developers’ ability to build the power plants and transmission necessary to meet new demand and keep costs down. These energy infrastructure projects are delayed through litigation that can drag on for years. As interest rates have risen, the cost of these delays compound and those costs are passed onto American households through higher utility bills. Effective permitting reform, then, is necessary to protect Americans from higher electricity prices and meet new demand.
Senators Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nevada) have introduced a bipartisan bill to address these issues. The Fighting for Reliable Energy and Ending Doubt for Open Markets Act (FREEDOM Act) amends the Energy Act of 2020 to tackle the most pressing federal permitting problems while preserving the substance of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Under the bill, agencies must meet enforceable deadlines, sponsors get expedited access to the courts when agencies miss them, and the federal government can no longer unilaterally halt projects that have already cleared the permitting process. The proposed reforms will help to expand the energy supply and lower energy costs.
The affordability stakes
Rising energy costs hurt low-income Americans the most. According to preliminary data from the Energy Information Administration , residential electricity prices rose nearly 33 percent in nominal terms from 2019 to 2025, outpacing broader inflation. The median household in the bottom 20 percent of income earners spends 9.8 percent of their income on energy; the top 20 percent spends just 1.2 percent. Energy inflation outpaces wage growth, exposing lower-income households to painful budget stress. In 2024, 43.8 percent of adults in households earning under $25,000 reported being unable to pay an energy bill at least once in the prior year. These are not fleeting issues driven by a short-term spike in fuel prices: rising power prices signal that the United States needs reforms to prevent unnecessary delays and protect ratepayers.
American demand for electricity has grown rapidly over the past few years and anticipated demand continues to accelerate. For 15 years, U.S. electricity demand was essentially flat. As recently as 2022, forecasters at Grid Strategies expected five-year load growth of about 24 gigawatts. By 2025, that five-year forecast had jumped nearly sevenfold, to 166 gigawatts. The biggest drivers are data centers, reshored manufacturing, and electrification. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation now expects peak demand will grow 24 percent over the next 10 years. If the United States cannot increase its energy supply to match demand, economic growth will decelerate and, all else equal, there will be less economic opportunity for Americans.
The approval process today is often long and uncertain. Under NEPA, a project that requires a “major federal action” must go through the environmental review process. In order to build a nuclear power plant, interstate transmission, or an offshore wind project, a developer must coordinate with the relevant federal agencies and produce the necessary analysis to inform the lead agency’s decision. For complex projects, the project sponsor and their consultants may prepare hundreds of pages of documentation. This analysis will form the basis for the lead agency’s Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). If the agency ultimately approves the project, then it will issue a Record of Decision (ROD). The developer may proceed after the ROD is issued, but major projects routinely face litigation months or even years after the agency’s final decision. The Breakthrough Institute found that energy projects spent a median of three years in litigation between final agency approval and a final court ruling. Although most of these projects were ultimately built, the post-NEPA litigation process imposed years of compounding interest costs before the infrastructure became available for use. Until the litigation is resolved, the developer faces the risk that courts could vacate the permit even after construction has completed.
Investors will pour trillions of dollars into the United States’ energy infrastructure over the coming decade. The current federal permitting process will both delay this infrastructure and raise its costs significantly, particularly given higher interest rates. A three year delay at a five percent interest rate is 15.8 percent in additional financing costs; an eight percent interest rate adds 26 percent in additional financing costs. For large energy infrastructure projects, just one year of delay could lead to billions in additional project costs. These costs will be passed on to ratepayers and consumers as higher prices.
What the FREEDOM Act does
Title I of the FREEDOM Act inserts a new Title XII into the Energy Act of 2020, built around three core mechanisms.
1. Enforceable deadlines
The central problem with federal permitting is uncertainty because projects routinely face years of litigation and delay. Such delays can turn otherwise-viable projects unprofitable, as financing costs compound. For every major project finished late and over budget, more are abandoned before a developer ever files. The potential for years of litigation following permit approval creates too much unnecessary risk.
Under the FREEDOM Act, the permitting process has a clear, bounded timeline. A sponsor files a notice of initiation with every agency expected to issue an authorization. The lead agency has 30 days to decide whether the notice is complete. If the agency misses that window, the notice is “deemed complete.” Within the next 30 days, the agency must publish a schedule classifying each authorization as “routine” or “complex” and set interim milestones and final decision dates.
These deadlines are binding. Routine authorizations must be decided within 90 days. Complex authorizations—e.g., those requiring Endangered Species Act consultations or Natural Gas Act certificates—have a one year deadline. If a project requires a full EIS, then the deadline can be extended to two years. If an agency misses a deadline, the delay is automatically treated as agency action “unlawfully withheld” or “unreasonably delayed.” The project sponsor can seek legal remedy through judicial review.
Once an agency misses a deadline, a court may authorize the developer to hire a qualified contractor to finish the necessary analysis. These costs are paid for by the agency out of a new $50 million Permitting Performance Fund. The agency must then use the contractor’s work. It cannot reject the contractor’s documentation over a policy disagreement if the work satisfies the law. This reform stops agencies from using their discretion to run out the clock on projects they oppose.
2. Expedited judicial review
A deadline is only as good as its enforcement. The FREEDOM Act allows a sponsor to petition a court over a final agency action, an agency’s failure to meet its obligations, or an order halting a fully permitted project. The bill sets clear filing windows to discourage nuisance litigation and limits discovery to what the review court determines to be necessary.
The court has the necessary authority to hold agencies accountable. It can set aside agency action that is arbitrary or unlawful, remand a matter with a binding deadline of no more than 180 days, and—in cases of unreasonable delay—order the agency to act and set deadlines. Either side can appeal to the court of appeals within 60 days.
3. Protection for fully permitted projects
Once a project has received a substantial majority of its required authorizations, no agency or federal official may terminate its construction or operation, revoke its permits, or otherwise halt an authorized activity. No agency may seek voluntary remand of an approved permit without the project sponsor’s consent. There are only two exceptions: a clear, immediate, and substantiated harm that the action is needed to prevent and that has no viable alternative, or an authorization that is illegal under federal law where reversal is the only remedy.
This is the bill’s answer to a real and bipartisan problem: administrations of both parties have used stop-work orders, suspensions, and reopened reviews to halt or reverse disfavored energy projects. President Trump paused offshore wind projects that were under construction. Under the FREEDOM Act, the Department of Interior could not halt a project that has received a substantial majority of its required federal authorizations. Similarly, under President Biden, Interior sought a voluntary remand of the previously approved Ambler Road right-of-way in Alaska. The Bureau of Land Management issued a supplemental EIS that concluded that the original Trump-era analysis was deficient and then terminated the right-of-way grant. Under the FREEDOM Act, an agency cannot ask for a voluntary remand without the approval of the project sponsor.
This is also where the FREEDOM Act improves on the SPEED Act. The SPEED Act offered similar permit protections, but a floor amendment allowed continued targeting of offshore wind. These provisions in the House bill stalled this prior permitting reform effort. The FREEDOM Act’s commitment to technological neutrality will offer robust protections to future technologies, even those that have not yet been commercialized.
Geothermal power plants
The FREEDOM Act would allow geothermal power plant developers to benefit from the same streamlined permitting processes as oil and gas companies. Geothermal power plants can provide a meaningful amount of clean, firm power. The plants work by using the Earth’s heat from deep underground to generate steam that spins a turbine. With next-generation geothermal power plants, there are many more locations where they are economically viable. However, federal rules currently disadvantage geothermal wells relative to oil and gas wells, despite their similarities.
Title III adds targeted reforms for next-generation geothermal. Interior would have to process geothermal applications within 60 days of completion of all applicable federal requirements, even when litigation is pending. The secretary of the Interior is directed to update and rename the “Gold Book,” an oil-and-gas field manual published by the Bureau of Land Management, to give geothermal developers the same plain-language guide to responsible development on federal land. Geothermal projects would benefit from the categorical exclusions already available to oil and gas. These reforms will help to expedite the development of next generation geothermal power generation.
By protecting every “covered energy project” regardless of technology, the FREEDOM Act gives developers and investors the certainty they need to build critical energy infrastructure. This reform gives states and communities confidence that new infrastructure will continue operations or construction regardless of shifts in national politics. The result will be more investment, stronger protection for ratepayers against supply shocks, and less tit-for-tat politicization of critical energy infrastructure.
The FREEDOM Act advances meaningful bipartisan reforms that will help to meet the rising demands of reindustrialization, the AI revolution, electric vehicles, and climate control systems. These technology neutral reforms will help to protect ratepayers, especially lower income Americans. Congress must act to address the fundamental issues with federal permitting process or ratepayers will be saddled with billions of dollars of unnecessary costs caused by delays.