LPPC Releases New Report | Priorities for Permitting Reform: Supporting Electric Reliability, Affordability, and Growth
LPPC members are planning major investments to meet rising electricity demand, including more than $166 billion in generation, transmission, and other electric infrastructure over the next decade.
That buildout is essential to reliability, affordability, and economic growth. But projects cannot serve customers if they are delayed by inefficient permitting, duplicative reviews, or prolonged litigation.
LPPC’s new report, “LPPC Priorities for Permitting Reform: Supporting Electric Reliability, Affordability, and Growth,” outlines practical federal reforms to help public power utilities build the infrastructure needed to serve growing demand from data centers, advanced manufacturing, and electrification.
Permitting reform is imperative to keeping critical investments on schedule and at a reasonable cost for the more than 30 million customers served by LPPC member utilities.
A National Reliability Challenge
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s 2026 Long-Term Reliability Assessment identifies elevated or high reliability risks across multiple regions over the next five years. Rising demand and delayed infrastructure development are creating broad reliability challenges across the North American bulk power system.
As electricity demand accelerates, Congress should enact permitting reforms that reduce delay, improve certainty, and help build the generation, transmission, and hydropower infrastructure needed to keep the grid reliable and customer costs reasonable.
“Communities across America are counting on Congress to deliver a modernized, efficient, predictable, and transparent permitting process — one that provides the project certainty needed to secure investment today, unlock economic growth, and foster innovation that creates opportunity and a stronger future for families and neighborhoods.”
- U.S. Chamber of Commerce letter to the U.S. Senate on behalf of 600 national, regional, and state organizations, February 2026
LPPC’s permitting agenda has two parts: first, Congress should enact broad permitting reforms that reduce delay, improve certainty, and help build critical energy infrastructure; second, any transmission provisions should follow clear guardrails that protect customers, respect regional planning, and preserve public power’s Federal Power Act protections.
