Liam Denning, Columnist

Manchin’s Drilling Bill Offers Climate Win: Elements by Liam Denning

Critical transmission projects would benefit from US bill to speed up permitting.

September 23, 2022 at 11:45 AM UTC

Liam Denning is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering energy. A former banker, he edited the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column and wrote the Financial Times’s Lex column.

Transmission towers at a Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) electrical substation in California.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg

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Hello and welcome to Elements, our daily energy and commodities newsletter. Bloomberg Opinion’s Liam Denning says climate advocates shouldn’t be so quick to oppose legislation by US Senator Joe Manchin that streamlines permitting, even if fossil-fuel projects benefit. There’s also a Photo of the Day to start your weekend. If you haven’t yet signed up to get it direct into your inbox, you can do that here.

Like climate change itself, getting stuff built in the US tends to follow a geological timescale. West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin’s new permitting bill aimed at accelerating energy projects is, like the Inflation Reduction Act that teed it up, a compromise between green and fossil-fuel priorities. Environmentalists shouldn’t be quick to dismiss it, though.