BAAJA: US legislation to speed up permitting carries hidden political risk, ‘won’t solve interconnection queue wait’

In addition, BAAJA introduces new rules requiring high-energy data centres to cover their full power delivery and grid-upgrade costs, with the aim of protecting residential and commercial ratepayers from these costs. The bill would also limit judicial challenges by restricting courts’ ability to issue broad injunctions or vacate certain permits and agency actions, intended to provide greater legal and financial certainty for project developers.

Industry Opinion

There have been mixed reactions to BAAJA within the renewables and battery energy storage system (BESS) sectors.

On 9 November, the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) sent a letter in support of BAAJA, signed by over 300 companies in solar PV and energy storage, to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Majority Leader John Thune, and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Signers active in the battery and battery energy storage system (BESS) space included Fluence, its US-headquartered battery cell supplier Fixx Energy, EPC Mortenson and developers Arevon, RWE Americas and MN8 Energy.

Others included PV microinverter supplier and energy management specialist Enphase Energy, which also makes its own AC Battery for energy storage; distributed energy resource (DER)-focused company Sunrun; South Korean-owned solar and smart energy company Qcells, part of the Hanwha Group; and engineering multinational Siemens.

SEIA wrote in part of its letter, “This bipartisan bill is exactly the kind of action America needs to meet growing energy demand, put downward pressure on energy prices, and deploy more affordable, reliable solar and storage for American families and businesses.”

Market research firm Wood Mackenzie wrote that, after Democrats captured the House and Senate in the midterms, permitting reform is the most likely way to ease US energy costs because it has bipartisan support. Renewable subsidies are likely to be vetoed, while federal rules on data centre costs face legal resistance, leaving the issue to the states.

It continued by describing BAAJA as central to this effort, proposing faster NEPA reviews, protections against permit revocation, a 150-day litigation window, and quicker water-quality permitting—measures seen as key to supporting gas-fired power growth and easing transmission congestion.

Even with Democratic control of Congress, success isn’t guaranteed: presidential veto power and executive dilution remain risks, and wind energy faces added uncertainty as a direct target of the administration.

With federal policy uncertain, states—such as Texas, following its gubernatorial shift towards stricter data centre oversight—are expected to play a bigger role, while a new executive order on bulk-power equipment imports adds further supply-chain risk. Wood Mackenzie’s David Brown likened the moment to the bipartisan 2007 energy law, arguing that similar cooperation is now needed for affordable energy and US AI leadership.

Jennifer Granholm, Energy Secretary under Biden and former Michigan governor, voiced support for BAAJA to news outlet Axios, stating, “Who’s to say we’re going to get a better deal? We still need a presidential signature in the next two years.”

BloombergNEF’s (BNEF) Derrick Flakoll, however, recently proposed a different outlook on BAAJA to Energy-Storage.news.

Flakoll said BAAJA is unlikely to ease the interconnection queue bottleneck frustrating storage developers. “BAAJA’s permitting reforms are more focused on federal energy permitting rather than the interconnection processes run by the regional transmission organisation and independent system operators (RTOs/ISOs).”

“The interconnection queue problem, if it is solved, will be solved in RTOs and ISOs and FERC, fairly separately from BAAJA.”

He said the scale of the Democratic win could hinder swift passage. “BAAJA could pass, but the size of the Democratic victory increases the odds that Democrats will try to stall until next Congress to write their own version, and the crowded Congressional calendar makes it hard to pass this bill when there are higher priorities like the budget, debt ceiling and National Defence Authorisation Act.”

Other effects of BAAJA

It is important to note that even with potentially positive effects for renewables and BESS, BAAJA, as it currently stands, would have impacts that extend far beyond these markets.

Non-profit environmental advocacy organisation The Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) wrote that its biggest concerns centre on BAAJA’s “project certainty” provisions, which would largely bar agencies from cancelling or modifying permits—even over newly discovered environmental harm—while exposing taxpayers to payouts of 25%–100% of project costs if permits are reinstated or “disparate treatment” claims succeed.

Judicial remedies are also sharply limited: courts could never invalidate permits under NEPA or NHPA, regardless of the severity of the violation, and CWA permit invalidation would be allowed only in narrow cases, often allowing construction to proceed before review is complete.

The bill further weakens core protections by curbing NEPA’s scope, restricting Tribal rights under NHPA’s Section 106 on sacred lands and cultural resources, raising states’ evidentiary burden under CWA while quadrupling general-permit impact thresholds, and allowing states to assume Endangered Species Act consultation duties despite often lacking capacity.

It also exempts millions of acres of private land from oil-and-gas permitting (risking landowners with orphaned wells) and grants mining companies broad rights to use public lands for waste disposal and infrastructure without environmental review—changes NRDC says go well beyond what’s needed for the bill’s beneficial transmission reforms.

The Native American Rights Fund, a nonprofit legal group, opposes the bill, saying it “severely weakens Tribal opportunities to engage as sovereign governments, curtails Tribal consultation requirements, and restricts access to legal recourse in court.”

Further, another non-profit organisation, Detention Watch Network (DWN), highlighted that BAAJA would “pave a path for detention expansion by making immigration detention facilities easier to build and much harder to stop.”

NEPA has historically been used to prevent the expansion of immigration detention facilities—notably when ICE spent US$1 billion converting 11 warehouses into detention facilities without environmental review, triggering lawsuits from several states and a Maryland injunction that stalled the plans.

BAAJA would undercut this by narrowing what counts as a “major federal action” (potentially exempting federally funded facilities like Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz”), stripping courts of the power to vacate faulty NEPA decisions or issue injunctions, and shifting review to appeals courts without full fact-finding.

This is notable because, according to exit polling from news agency Associated Press, immigration policy was one of the top issues for voters. Further, US President Donald Trump stated to CBS’ 60 Minutes that his deportation policy was likely, in part, responsible for Republicans’ loss, stating, “I think it might be too tough, yeah.”

BAAJA could give renewables and BESS a much-needed boost. But prioritising it before a new Congress can make revisions risks alienating several prominent Democratic factions, potentially slowing further progress.