America’s Energy Grid Can’t Keep Up with Demand. Here’s What Congress Can Do About It.

Electricity demand is growing at a pace not seen in decades. And the infrastructure needed to meet our increasing energy demand isn't being built fast enough. This is not because of a shortage of projects or investment, but because our permitting system was built for a different era, and it’s standing in the way.

The result is higher costs, deferred jobs, and communities waiting on energy infrastructure that should already be online. With the midterm elections approaching and the congressional calendar shrinking, the window to fix this is closing. Congress needs to act now.

To understand the full scope of the problem, Next American Era commissioned the Responsible Business Initiative to produce a white paper titled: “The Cost of Delay: Federal Permitting and America's Energy Challenge.” And the findings are striking.

The Numbers Tell the Story

More than 8,200 projects representing over 2,000 gigawatts of generation and storage are currently waiting to connect to the grid. Of everything that requested interconnection between 2000 and 2020, only 13 percent was ever built. Roughly three-quarters withdrew from the queue entirely. That’s more than a backlog, that’s a sign the system isn’t working and consumers are the ones stuck paying the price.

Grid congestion – the cost consumers pay when cheaper power can't get where it needs to go – reached $12 billion in 2024, the fourth consecutive year it exceeded $10 billion. The median wait from interconnection request to commercial operation now exceeds five years. Federal environmental review adds its own layer: between 2010 and 2018, the average Environmental Impact Statement took 4.5 years to complete, with roughly a quarter taking more than six years.

And delays don’t stop there. Even after a project finally clears the line, equipment delays and increased costs compound the problem. 

Who Pays the Price

Ultimately, the burden falls hardest on those who can least afford it. In 2024, nearly 4 million low-income households faced energy insecurity, meaning they’re going without food or medicine to pay an energy bill, or having to live without heating or cooling. 

Small and mid-size energy developers – the ones most likely to bring new competition and lower costs – are also vulnerable. Multi-year queues and rising interconnection deposits eat up capital before a project earns a dollar. And for the more than 537,000 construction workers tied to transmission, distribution, and storage, every month a project sits idle means lost wages, lost healthcare eligibility, and lost apprenticeship hours that can only be earned on the job.

Why Reform Keeps Falling Short

The paper’s central finding is both simple and important: delay has no single cause. That’s why reform efforts calibrated to one bottleneck – such as NEPA, or one agency, or one statute – consistently fall short. Progress hits the next obstacle and stalls again.

The real sources of delay are overlapping: sequential rather than concurrent agency review, no single accountable decision-maker across six or more federal agencies, understaffed offices, interconnection backlogs, equipment supply chain problems, and administration-to-administration reversals that undermine the certainty investors and communities need to move forward.

Keeping the lights on isn’t a partisan issue. Permitting delays slow clean energy and conventional energy projects alike. What’s needed is a system that is faster, more predictable, and built for the moment we're actually in, not the one from 50 years ago.

The Window Is Now

Three bipartisan bills are currently before the Senate: the SPEED Act, which passed the House in December 2025, the CERTAIN Act, and the FREEDOM Act. If Congress can find common ground, permitting reform may still be possible this session.

A Phase II paper evaluating specific policy solutions is on the way. But the factual case is already clear: the status quo is costing American families, workers, and communities billions every year. It's time for Congress to act.

Read the full white paper and accompanying fact sheet HERE.