A few early analyses have tried to quantify just what BAAJA would mean for emissions in the US. One, from the think tank Rhodium Group, found that in the best-case scenario, the bill would cut economy-wide emissions by 4%, reduce annual energy bills by $78 per household, and add 200 gigawatts of new clean energy by 2040. In the worst case, emissions would stay about the same.
Another report, from the nonprofit research group Resources for the Future, found that the bill could cut power-sector emissions 6% by 2041 and save more than $350 billion on system costs by midcentury.
But there are some concerns that this permitting bill’s real effect would be to open the floodgates for new natural-gas plants. As data centers have put more pressure on the grid, a wave of such plants have been announced.
“You get down to a trade-off between essentially growing the clean electricity industry on the one hand and then, as a compromise, growing the fossil-fuel industry on the other,” says Kevin Kircher, an energy modeler and assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Purdue.
To quantify that trade-off, Kircher also modeled the potential emissions effects of the bill and found that if BAAJA had been in place in 2025, energy sector emissions would have been higher than the actual baseline. Health and mortality risks associated with air pollution would also have increased.
This bill is scheduled for a Senate vote on November 9, well before the next Congress takes control. It’s not clear what the dramatic victories for Democrats might mean for the legislation, which was expected to pass the Senate with largely Republican support if a few Democrats got on board. Democrats could decide to wait for next year, when they’ll have control of both chambers. But any deal would ultimately need to win Trump’s signature, limiting what a future bill might be able to change.
In a world where permitting new projects is easier, we’ll see more clean energy, but we’ll see more natural gas, too. And while prices could get lower, that could push demand for electricity higher, leading to more emissions overall.
Simplifying the permitting system and cutting red tape is a worthy goal. But when it comes to emissions, it still really matters what, exactly, you want to build.
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