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A bipartisan permitting bill could cut costs and speed clean energy deployment.

It’s a Topper Takeover! We at Speed & Scale have long advocated for the need to grow and deploy our clean energy infrastructure – Let’s build, friends, build! So we’ve invited CleanEcon to share their insights on the bipartisan permitting reform legislation now before Congress.

SUPERCHARGE CLEAN ENERGY DEPLOYMENT & AFFORDABILITY THROUGH PERMITTING REFORM: Despite massive U.S. gains in renewables deployment, the shift to clean energy remains bottlenecked by an outmoded, inflexible permitting process. In short: The status quo isn’t designed for speed and scale, and power transmission suffers the most. After several failed reform efforts over the last few years, our best opportunity yet may be the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA). Introduced by Senators Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), Mike Lee (R-UT), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), the historic 417-page bill would result in faster environmental reviews, a tighter window for litigation, and protections against permit revocations.

The stakes are high for both consumers and the climate. BAAJA would lower electricity prices in every region of the country, saving households up to $78 a year by 2040. And while the bill’s efficiencies may modestly help natural gas, they would sharply accelerate renewables and transmission deployment. Preliminary Rhodium group modeling finds that BAAJA is a net gain for climate; it would cut carbon emissions by 1.5 gigatons cumulatively through 2040.  Here’s how it would help accelerate the transition:

• Expanded transmission infrastructure and renewables;

• Accelerated geothermal deployment;

• A faster path to market for battery and storage technologies;

• A mandate for large data centers to pay for grid upgrades they require.

BAAJA’s first political test comes when the Senate returns after the November 3 midterm elections, when they’ll take a vote to open debate. There’s a short window to get things done in the “lame duck” congressional session, and various constituencies’ concerns must be addressed.  If the bill clears 60 votes, it will then need to get through the House.

While BAAJA may not be perfect, it’s a comprehensive attempt to advance clean grid infrastructure, and its best opportunity for passage is this year.  Energy demand is rising at its fastest pace in two decades, consumer costs cry out to be addressed, and market dynamics for more clean energy buildout have never been more favorable. Every year of delay spells a harder pathway. The time for action is now.

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🚗 1.0 – Electrify Transportation

• Charging Back: EVs captured 6.1 percent of U.S. new vehicle purchases in Q3, marking three straight quarters of growth. Refreshed models are helping to drive a rebound from a slump after federal tax incentives ended. Leading the way: the Toyota bZ and Lexus RZ, whose sales roughly doubled in Q3. First-mover Tesla still commands more than half the U.S. EV market despite a 20 percent sales drop year-over-year (TechCrunch).

• Half Empty: For the first time ever, gasoline-only cars accounted for less than half of global new-vehicle sales. Their share fell to 49 percent in the first half of 2026, down from 73 percent just five years ago. Even as the overall auto market contracted, both battery EV and hybrid sales continued to rise. In Europe, battery EVs have drawn even with gasoline-only cars at 21.7 percent of sales through August (Forbes).

💡 2.0 – Decarbonize the Grid

• Peak Performance: Marking a decisive shift in the economics of peak power, four-hour battery storage now beats open-cycle gas peakers on levelized cost in all 43 markets modeled by Wood Mackenzie. Gas turbine shortages and fuel price volatility are widening the advantage for batteries, though this year’s 2 percent uptick in European storage capital costs shows the downward cost curve isn’t altogether smooth (Wood Mackenzie).

• Terawatt Test: To limit global warming to 1.5°C, IRENA’s updated roadmap calls for global renewable capacity to grow more than sevenfold, from 5.2 terawatts today to 38.2 terawatts by 2050. Record installations are only part of this daunting equation. Lagging grids, insufficient efficiency gains, and rising electricity demand equate to a $10 trillion annual investment bill through 2050 (IRENA).

• Nuclear Rebooted: In an unprecedented endeavor to meet rising energy demand,  the U.S. is attempting to restart three shuttered nuclear power plants. Reviving the decommissioned reactors would restore more than 2 gigawatts of carbon-free electricity. Google and Microsoft have signed advance agreements to purchase power from two of the plants for their data centers (Associated Press).

🐄 3.0 – Fix Food

• Meat in the Middle: With plant-based meat sales down 10 percent last year, food startups are betting that blending beef with mushrooms and mycelium (vegetative filaments from fungi) will make for a more palatable lower-emissions protein. Food-tech startup Joyn says its 50/Cut burger costs cafeterias up to 15 percent while halving a standard beef patty’s emissions, though blended meat still has a substantially larger footprint than fully plant-based alternatives (MIT Technology Review).

• Distance Learning: While transportation accounts for roughly one fifth of food-system emissions, livestock and land clearing are even bigger culprits, researchers have found. Swapping red meat for plant proteins delivers far greater emissions cuts than buying local, though seasonal produce sourced nearby can help avoid emissions from air freight and refrigerated trucking (The Guardian).

OKR Highlight

FOUR MORE YEARS: Climate scientists, environmentalists, and Indigenous communities all breathed a sigh of relief with the reelection of Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, the country’s most prominent champion for preserving and restoring the Amazon rainforest. The stakes were high; Lula’s opponent in the October 25 runoff was Flavio Bolsonaro, a climate skeptic who pledged to open the rainforest to mining and ranching interests. Under Bolsonaro’s father, the former President Jair Bolsonaro, more than 17,000 square miles of the Amazon were lost to deforestation.

Lula’s government, by contrast, aims to stop all illegal deforestation and regrow more than 23,000 square miles of rainforest by 2030. Over the 12 months through this July, Amazon deforestation plunged by 42 percent, its steepest decline since records began in 1988. Clearing in the Cerrado, Brazil’s savanna, dropped by 24 percent. Lula’s continued stewardship is seen as a crucial counterweight to the right-tilting National Congress set to take office next February.

🌳 4.0 – Protect Nature

• Deforestation Defunded: In related news, the World Bank has withdrawn a proposed $20 million loan to a Brazilian company that mills soy for livestock feed. The move comes as a response to concerns from more than 100 environmental and Indigenous groups over the company’s alleged illegal deforestation of nearly 5,000 acres of rainforest. Still, the bank continues to invest in emissions-intensive industrial livestock production worldwide, to the tune of $1.4 billion in emerging economies between 2023 and 2024 (Inside Climate News).

🧱 5.0 – Clean Up Industry

• Slag Rally: Ozinga has completed what it calls North America’s largest slag cement mill, which aims to recycle the steelmaking byproduct into roughly 1 million metric tons of low-carbon cement annually. The company says its product has up to 80 percent less embodied carbon than Portland cement. Buyers will be incentivized to switch by conventional cement shortages, delivery delays, and price volatility (S&P Global).

• Windows of Opportunity: Glass skyscrapers are in vogue in some of the world’s hottest cities, even though their vast windows boost cooling demands and energy costs. In Malaysia, where air-conditioning accounts for roughly 60 percent of building energy use, skyscraper architects are introducing smaller windows, better shading, and advanced glass coatings to reduce energy demand without losing the views that make these towers so desirable (New York Times).

🧹 6.0 – Remove Carbon

• Cattle Call: Google and McKinsey agreed to buy 320,000 metric tons of carbon removal credits in the coalition’s first silvopasture deal, funding restoration of 34 square miles of degraded pasture in Brazil. The new trees can coexist with working livestock ranches, and future timber revenue will motivate landowners to keep the trees when credit income fades (Reuters).

• Thin Film, Big Bet: Japan is pushing carbon recycling toward commercial scale with a $12.6 billion green innovation fund and government support for synthetic fuels and gases. Sumitomo Chemical is testing membrane-based carbon capture for smaller industrial facilities, targeting costs of roughly $13 per ton of CO₂ (S&P Global).

🏛️ 7.0 – Win Politics And Policy

• Stall Tactics: Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, and India are pushing for a one-year delay, to 2029, for the next major climate assessment by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. If they win out, the COP33 climate summit in 2028 would lack the latest science to evaluate global emissions commitments. Even as the four countries argue that more time would allow greater participation from emerging economies, vulnerable countries are pushing to keep the original timeline ahead of the summit’s global stocktake (The Guardian).

• Mind the Gap: Global emissions must fall 45 percent from 2025 levels by 2035 to preserve the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit global warming to 1.5°C, according to the UN Environment Programme‘s latest Emissions Gap Report. Even if countries fully deliver on all current climate pledges, emissions would fall just 11 to 15 percent by 2035, leaving the world on track for roughly 2.6°C of warming this century (UNEP).

🏃 8.0 – Turn Movements Into Action

• Flop Culture: Tom Cruise’s Digger, a big-budget climate satire about an oil tycoon whose drilling triggers an environmental catastrophe, is one of the year’s biggest box-office disappointments. Yet despite commercial failure, novelist Jayson Greene argues that the film’s unconventional twist offers a thoughtful take on our society’s collective failure to confront climate change (The New York Times).

• Scope Creep: In a low-profile fight over how carbon emissions get counted, the Greenhouse Gas Protocol, the de facto global standard for more than two decades, has a new challenger: an “e-ledger” model backed by a business coalition that includes ExxonMobil and BlackRock’s Global Infrastructure Partners. E-ledgers curb double-counting but also shift accountability from oil producers to consumers who have little influence over the energy system (TIME).

⚡ 9.0 – Innovate!

• Flash in the Vent: Endurance Energy drilled the world’s first subsea geothermal well at Axial Seamount, about 300 miles off Oregon. The prototype netted 2 kilowatts for just 8.7 seconds—a far cry from its goal of running a 100-kilowatt generator for a year. After software and cable failures ended the try well short of a planned 200 feet down, the startup plans another attempt this winter (Heatmap News).

• Smoke Signals: California’s wildfire detection network uses artificial intelligence for real-time surveillance–and is spotting most fires before 911 calls come through. The Alert California program uses 1,300 remote cameras to help firefighters identify blazes and deploy resources more quickly, though early detection cannot find every fast-moving fire (New York Times).  

💰 10.0 – Invest!

• Fund Raiser: Blackstone has raised $8.7 billion for a fund to advance cleaner energy, 55 percent more than its last go-round, and has already deployed a quarter of the capital across six investments. With electricity demand surging, the firm is targeting power plants, transmission infrastructure, and equipment suppliers, including businesses that offer data center cooling and utility operations (Bloomberg Law).

• Pipeline Pressure: With U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urging the World Bank to formally drop its ban on oil and gas exploration, the organization said it will back “gas where appropriate” alongside renewables, nuclear, and hydro. To this point, the bank’s clean energy lending has held at just under $10 billion a year since 2023, against less than $1.5 billion a year for fossil fuels (Climate Home News).

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