Key facts
- The Senate voted 73-25 on Monday to formally take up the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.
- The bill would speed permitting for oil, gas, coal, wind and solar projects, according to the report.
- Data center operators would pay a bigger share of grid upgrades under the bill, Reuters reported.
- Senator Shelley Moore Capito said the bill was "a major step toward making it faster and more efficient and easier to build infrastructure projects."
- Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said the bill is "the floor, not the ceiling, of our climate and environmental aspirations."
The Senate voted 73-25 on Monday to formally take up the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, a bill that would speed permitting for new energy projects including oil, gas, coal, wind and solar installations, according to a report by Oilprice.com.
The bill drew broad support from the previous Senate in early October, and a vote on it had been scheduled for after the midterm elections, the report said. Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia described the bill as "a major step toward making it faster and more efficient and easier to build infrastructure projects."
Under the bill, data center operators would be made to pay a bigger portion of the grid upgrades needed to secure enough electricity for growing demand, Reuters reported on the vote, according to Oilprice.com. The report said transmission upgrades have become a new focus for energy investment worldwide after a buildout of alternative energy installations failed to deliver more affordable electricity because of a lack of transmission capacity.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse said at a news conference following the vote that the bill is "the floor, not the ceiling, of our climate and environmental aspirations," the report said, citing Reuters. The Center for Biological Diversity's director for government affairs said in a statement that Democrats supporting the bill are "sleepwalking into catastrophe by handing Trump virtually unlimited power to further entrench fossil fuels and enrich data center tech oligarchs in the last two years of his presidency," according to the report.
The report said environmental organizations, which it described as vocal opponents of new oil, gas and coal projects, were instrumental in formulating the Democrats' energy transition agenda. It also said several legislators who joined Congress after the midterm elections ran on platforms calling for tighter control of data centers and assurances that operators would pay for their own electricity, citing Texas as an example.