Attorney General Jeff Landry is claiming a legal win for Louisiana residents after leading a coalition of 18 states to block federal energy permitting reforms proposed by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia).
Manchin said he continues to support permitting reforms that give the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission more leeway to assure Americans will have affordable reliable energy options. But recently he asked Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to pull Manchin’s permitting proposals from a continuing resolution on appropriations.
In a statement emailed to the Louisiana Record, Manchin said the permitting reforms for the construction of energy facilities nationwide would have accelerated needed infrastructure projects. Landry, however, said the proposal would upend states’ authority to regulate rights-of-ways for energy transmission facilities.
“I am proud to announce that – after leading a coalition of 18 states against the D.C. elites – the back-door attempt to impose the failed Clean Power Plan has been thwarted with Joe Manchin removing his dangerous ‘energy permitting reform’ proposal from the Senate spending package,” Landry said in a statement emailed to the Record.
Landry and officials from the other states contend that Manchin’s plan was an attack on federalism, allowing federal regulators to overstep their traditional roles in energy decisions and allowing consumers to become pawns of renewable energy producers.
The plan would have also allowed private companies to use eminent domain against state lands and cause residents in some states to subsidize energy facilities in other states, according to a letter sent to U.S. Senate leaders by the coalition of state attorneys general.
“These provisions eviscerate state sovereign authority, commandeer companies to carry out the will of a three-vote majority of FERC Commissioners, undermine the power of each citizen’s vote to decide policies at the state level, and inevitably force the citizens of our states to subsidize the costs of expensive energy policy preferences of California and New York,” the letter states.
In explaining his decision to withdraw the permitting proposals, Manchin said he wanted to avoid the possibility of a government shutdown resulting from political infighting. But he still stands behind the reforms as essential to protecting the nation’s energy security at a time when Russian leader Vladimir Putin “continues to weaponize energy.”