Government shutdown harming U.S. energy and jobs due to frozen EPA permitting

By Tate Miller
The Center Square

Energy advocates are warning of the harm the government shutdown is causing to American energy and jobs due to the fact that EPA permitting remains frozen, while the federal government’s decades of “approval-heavy policies” is likewise to blame.

Campaign director for Power America at the nonprofit research institute America First Policy Institute Ted Ellis told The Center Square that “the shutdown has disrupted essential, nonpolitical EPA work that communities rely on.”

Such services include “reviewing state air and water plans, processing permits tied to refinery upgrades, pipelines, or drinking water and wastewater projects,” Ellis said.

“When that work pauses, construction crews can’t start, state regulators can’t issue their own approvals, and private investment sits idly by,” Ellis said.

“Every week of delay adds cost and, in some cases, misses weather or construction windows, which is especially hard on smaller communities and on energy projects that are already dealing with high interest rates,” Ellis said.

In an America First Policy Institute press release, Ellis said that the stalling of American energy and jobs is due to the shutdown freezing EPA permitting.

Similar to Ellis, communications director Larry Behrens at Power the Future told The Center Square: “There is no doubt this shutdown is having an impact on energy because when there is less manpower to review permits and [roll] back needless regulations, energy projects can suffer.”

Power the Future is a nonprofit dedicated to Americans working in reliable energy sources, according to its website.

Behrens told The Center Square that “the American people elected leaders to deliver Energy Dominance and with every potential delay there is time lost.”

“Even a short stoppage could have a long impact as projects potentially lose momentum and face higher costs with delays,” Behrens said.

Behrens made the point that “the American people should be angry to see [that] many of the same politicians who now vote to keep the government closed sat silently in the last days of the Biden administration while the EPA tried to burn through as much money as possible.”

“Their message is clear, when they were in charge, they couldn’t spend tax dollars fast enough, but when Americans demand energy dominance to lower prices, they’re fine serving as a road block,” Behrens said.

Ellis told The Center Square that the government shutdown will have lasting impacts on U.S. energy.

“Shutdowns create a backlog,” Ellis said. “When EPA comes back to full capacity, it will have to restart suspended work.”

“That pushes timelines for energy and other projects further into the future even if Congress solves the funding fight in the near term,” Ellis said.

“Because the shutdown plan prevents EPA from acting on many state submissions, states are also unable to fully implement their own programs,” Ellis said. “These delays ripple outward, holding up energy projects and job activity across the country.”

Ellis emphasized that the problem is “not that emergency environmental protection stops.”

“The point is that the decades of approval-heavy policies from the federal government have made it too hard, even in normal times, to build the energy and industrial capacity the country needs,” Ellis said.

“A shutdown magnifies that weakness when those approvals can’t even be evaluated,” Ellis said.

“The government must reopen and begin issuing permits again so Americans can continue building affordable, reliable energy,” Ellis said.

Shortly before the shutdown, the EPA issued a permit for a deepwater port in Texas that will allow for 365 million oil barrels to be loaded each year, as The Center Square reported.

Neither clean energy group American Council on Renewable Energy nor the EPA responded when asked to comment.