Pennsylvania is running out of power. Washington is part of the problem.

All too often these days, constructing a major energy infrastructure project in Pennsylvania involves years of court fights and permitting delays.

The PennEast Pipeline spent seven years in federal review and legal challenge only to be cancelled by its sponsors. Review for the Tioga Pathway Project, which broke ground this summer after a three-year approval process, was considered fast by current standards.

 In a state that is one of the world’s leading natural gas producers, this should not be the benchmark for efficiency. Time and again, Pennsylvanians have seen gigawatts of desperately needed energy infrastructure and electrical generation capacity lost to legal settlements rather than placed into service.

Gov. Josh Shapiro has done his part in recent years to fix these issues at the state level. Now it is time for similar reforms federally.

Over the past several months, that dynamic has come into sharp focus. Since March 2026, the Trump Administration has reached agreements with several offshore wind developers to cancel their federal leases in exchange for a dollar-for-dollar reimbursement of the original lease amount. Six companies have collectively reallocated over $4 billion in planned wind capacity to redeploy into oil, gas, and LNG infrastructure.

The terms of those agreements have drawn criticism and legal scrutiny. Opponents have been quick to dismiss the deals as taxpayer-funded giveaways to the President’s allies at the expense of clean energy.

Yet while the Trump Administration offers ample reason for ethical scrutiny, these reimbursements are neither a misuse of taxpayer money nor is it the first time the energy industry has battled executive whiplash. The reality is, unless Washington advances durable, bipartisan permitting reform, this broken cycle will keep repeating.

What’s most notable about the lease buy-back is the investment conditions that led the developers to walk away. Each of these companies acquired a lease through a competitive federal process and spent a significant amount of time and money working through established regulatory channels.

They abandoned their projects for the same reason that the PennEast Pipeline folded and the Tioga Pathway Project barely skirted by: the policy environment is so uncertain that investors would rather cancel outright than gamble billions on developments in such an uncertain regulatory environment.

Unfortunately, these settlements also do nothing to address the conditions that produced them, nor do they resolve underlying concerns about grid reliability. The offshore wind cancellations are a visible and expensive illustration of what permitting dysfunction produces at scale. But the issues they faced are not unique are just one of many the obstacles developers of new electrical generation capacity face.

 PJM’s interconnection queue currently holds more than 90 gigawatts of generation capacity from a variety of energy sources waiting for a connection to the grid that the current permitting system cannot deliver on a predictable timeline.

That backlog represents hundreds of billions in stranded investment. At the same time peak electricity demand is projected to grow by more than 30 gigawatts by 2030. The grid needs that capacity but the system tasked with approving it was not built for this moment.

 The National Environmental Policy Act – which requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impacts of major infrastructure projects before issuing a decision – is a big driver of these delays. The law served a legitimate purpose when it passed in 1970, but it has since enabled unworkable regulatory dysfunction.

Average review timelines stretch past four years, environmental impact statements run hundreds of pages, and the constant threat of litigation means that projects completing federal review are simply entering the next phase of delay rather than the construction phase.

 Pennsylvania’s diverse energy economy depends on infrastructure that can be permitted and built within a timeframe that makes investment viable and leaves it uniquely exposed to this dysfunction. When that framework breaks down, it is the residents and business owners in the Commonwealth who absorb the consequences.  

Reforming the permitting process does not require gutting environmental reviews. It means setting timelines that agencies are required to meet, reducing the redundancy that builds up when multiple agencies analyze the same project in sequence, and providing enough legal predictability that investors can make long-term commitments without pricing in years of litigation risk.

Pennsylvania’s grid is under real pressure. What the Commonwealth needs now is Washington to follow the lead of Governor Shapiro and usher in a permitting system that allows new generation, of every kind, to reach the grid before the shortfall arrives.

T.J. Rooney previously served as chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party and is a former member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives. 

Courtesy of Pennsylvania Capital-Star