CHARLESTON, W.Va. (WV News) — The state Senate passed a resolution Monday urging Congress to enact reforms to the process of issuing permits for federal energy projects.

Senate Concurrent Resolution 16 asks federal lawmakers to revise current policies related to permitting and environmental review processes in the interest of promoting “economic and environmental stewardship by expediting the deployment of modern energy infrastructure,” according to Senate President Craig Blair, R-Berkeley.

“The federal government’s permitting process is a system of unnecessarily complex, redundant and uncertain [rules], thereby discouraging investment and job creation in the energy sector,” he said.

Blair, who explained the resolution from the floor of the Senate chamber instead of his usual spot on the dais, said he came up with the idea for the measure in his role as chair of the Southern Legislative Conference’s Council of State Governments Southern Office.

“We’re attempting to send a clear message that the federal government exists for the purposes of the states,” he said. “The states do not exist for the purposes of the federal government.”

The plan is to have the other CSG South member states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia — pass similar resolutions, Blair said.

“It may not work,” he said. “But I can tell you what’s not working, and that’s the current environment that we have now.”

SCR 16 now goes to the House of Delegates for consideration.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who has announced he will not seek re-election in 2024, has said he would like to see the federal energy permitting process overhauled before his term is up.

“We have to get permitting done. That’s my final goal — to get permitting done,” he told members of the media in mid-November. “And I’m determined to get that done.”

Both Manchin and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., along with Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va., have repeatedly backed attempts to overhaul the permitting process for energy projects requiring approval from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

The delegation’s efforts to pass legislation reforming the process have taken various forms over the past two years — as standalone bills, as deals with the White House and as part of larger legislative packages — but all have included reining in project timelines and limiting legal actions against projects.

Manchin, chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, laid out the case for permitting reform in an op-ed published last spring, saying the current process is “broken” and “consumed by bureaucratic delays and endless litigation at every turn.”

“Let me be clear: The road ahead to enact meaningful permitting reforms is not easy,” Manchin wrote. “But if we put partisan politics aside and truly work on behalf of all West Virginians and the American people, like they deserve, then we can find a solution that strengthens our energy security and ensures America remains a global energy leader.”

Manchin’s Senate term will end Jan. 3, 2025, giving the him just over a year to complete this “final goal.”

Capito, who serves as the ranking Republican member of the Senate Committee on Environmental and Public Works, recently said she plans to continue backing efforts to overhaul the permitting process.

“We’re trying to push some permitting reforms so that we can have more grid development to handle the new electric economy that we’re moving towards,” she said. “We are straining our grid right now; you see certain blackouts in areas and brownouts. And we also need to have judicial review there, so we don’t have these unending legal battles like you saw with the Mountain Valley Pipeline.”

Capito said she and Manchin are well positioned to spearhead these efforts with their respective committee assignments.

“Through my committee and his committee, we’re certainly going to keep working on it,” she said. “There’s a lot of interest from all kinds of the spectrum — whether it’s the environmentalists or it’s folks who are interested in ‘all of the above’ energy like I am — to be able to get some more permitting so that we can move these projects forward, whether it’s a renewable project, whether it’s a pipeline, whether it’s nuclear or whatever it be.”