The Country Can’t Build Fast Enough.
And the AI Grid Won’t Wait.
The slogan is “energy dominance.” The reality, on May 31, 2026, is a country that cannot build the pipelines, transmission lines, and power plants the next decade demands — not because it lacks the gas, the capital, or the engineering, but because the federal permit takes years and the lawsuit that follows can take years more.
That is the argument Chad J. Zamarin — president and CEO of Williams Companies, the largest operator of natural-gas pipelines in the United States — laid out in a Washington Examiner op-ed published the same day. His line is blunt: the supply is here; the infrastructure to move it is the limiting factor. And no executive order, he writes, can substitute for durable permitting reform passed by Congress.
The bipartisan vehicle exists. The House passed the SPEED Act in December 2025, 221-196. Its Senate predecessor, the Manchin-Barrasso bill, cleared committee in 2024 and then died without a floor vote. The AI data-center boom is not waiting for the Senate to decide which outcome it prefers.
- 4.5 yrsto permitaverage federal Environmental Impact Statement, notice-to-decision (2010-2018) — CEQ EIS Timeline Reports
- 221-196House votethe SPEED Act (H.R.4776) passed the House, Dec. 18, 2025 — Congress.gov
- 12%of US powerdata centers' projected share of US electricity by 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023 — DOE / LBNL
- S.4753died 2024the Manchin-Barrasso Energy Permitting Reform Act, tabled with no floor vote — Senate ENR
The United States produces more crude oil and more natural gas than any country in the history of the world. That is the part of “energy dominance” that is already true. The part that is not true — and the part Williams CEO Chad Zamarin built his op-ed around — is the ability to move and use that energy. Gas trapped in the Appalachian basin or the Permian does nothing for a data center in Virginia or a factory in Ohio if there is no pipeline to carry it and no transmission line to deliver the power it generates.
The chokepoint is regulatory, not geological. Under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), major federal infrastructure approvals typically require an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). According to the Council on Environmental Quality’s own EIS Timeline Reports, the average EIS took roughly 4.5 yearsfrom notice of intent to record of decision across 2010-2018 — before a single shovel moved and before the inevitable litigation. Recent reforms have pulled the median closer to two and a half years, but the gap between “approved on paper” and “built and energized” remains measured in years.
“Energy is not a sector of the economy, it is the sector that enables every other sector. Energy is life.”
Energy Secretary Chris Wright (R) · CERAWeek 2025
The framing Zamarin presses — and it is the framing of the company that operates the Transco system, the artery that carries gas from the Gulf Coast up the Eastern Seaboard — is that pipelines, not gas supply, are now the binding constraint. The country is sitting on the fuel. It cannot reliably build the steel that delivers it. Energy dominance on paper means little if the infrastructure to realize it stays stuck in permitting and litigation.
The concrete legislative answer Zamarin points toward is the SPEED Act— the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act, H.R.4776 in the 119th Congress. It is not a party-line product. It was introduced on July 25, 2025, by House Natural Resources Chairman Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-AR) alongside Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME), one of the most moderate members of the House Democratic caucus.
On December 18, 2025, the full House passed the bill 221-196. The cross-party math was real but lopsided: eleven Democrats voted yes, one Republican voted no. That eleven-vote crossover is exactly the kind of durable, bipartisan support that distinguishes a statute from a single-party policy that evaporates with the next administration — the distinction Zamarin’s op-ed turns on.
- →Narrows when NEPA review is triggered, so routine projects don't all draw a full Environmental Impact Statement
- →Limits the 'effects' an agency must study to those with a reasonably close (proximate) causal connection to the action
- →Clarifies that federal funding alone does not automatically trigger NEPA review
- →Imposes a 150-day statute of limitations on lawsuits challenging a NEPA decision
- →Directs courts to give substantial deference to agencies' NEPA determinations
The House has passed the SPEED Act — bipartisan, common-sense permitting reform that cuts the NEPA red tape strangling American energy and infrastructure projects. It's time for the Senate to act so we can actually build.
The bill now sits in the Senate, where it needs 60 votes to overcome a filibuster. That threshold is where the SPEED Act’s predecessor died — and where its fate will be decided. The House did its part five months ago. The Senate has not voted.
This is not the first bipartisan permitting deal to reach the brink. In 2024, then-Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV), chairing the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, partnered with the committee’s ranking Republican, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), on the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (S.4753). The committee advanced it 15-4— a genuinely bipartisan vote that paired faster approvals for gas, transmission, and critical minerals with provisions to speed clean-energy projects.
It never got a floor vote. As the 118th Congress wound down, the bill was tabled in December 2024 and expired with the session. The reasons were the familiar ones: it pleased neither flank. Some Democrats objected that it eased fossil-fuel permitting; some Republicans wanted deeper litigation limits. The bipartisan center that wrote it could not assemble a floor majority around it.
“It's a shame that our country is losing this monumental opportunity to advance the commonsense, bipartisan permitting reform bill.”
Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) · December 19, 2024, on the bill's death
The lesson Williams and other infrastructure operators drew from that collapse is the one Zamarin restates: a committee vote is not a law, and a law is not an executive order. Manchin-Barrasso had genuine support and still died because permitting reform requires both parties to swallow a provision they dislike. The SPEED Act now faces the same Senate arithmetic that buried its predecessor.
What changed the math is artificial intelligence. According to a December 2024 report from the Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, U.S. data centers consumed about 176 terawatt-hours in 2023 — roughly 4.4% of all U.S. electricity, up from 58 TWh, or about 1.9%, in 2014. The report projects that share could reach between 6.7% and 12% of national electricity demand by 2028. AI-specific server demand more than doubled between 2017 and 2023 and is the engine behind the curve.
- →2014: data centers ≈ 58 TWh — about 1.9% of US electricity
- →2023: data centers ≈ 176 TWh — about 4.4% of US electricity
- →2028 (projected): 6.7%–12% of US electricity demand
- →AI server demand more than doubled from 2017 to 2023
- →Transmission upgrades to serve new load take 5–10 years to build
The collision is straightforward. Data centers want to come online in two or three years. The transmission upgrades to serve them take five to ten. The gas pipelines to fuel the plants behind them take years to permit and survive litigation. A hyperscaler can build a campus faster than the grid can be permitted to power it — which is why a permitting statute, normally a sleepy subject, has become an AI-strategy question.
Powering the AI revolution and reindustrializing America means we have to build — pipelines, transmission, baseload power. Permitting reform is how we go from energy dominance on paper to energy delivered.
The executive branch has moved hard on its own. On day one — January 20, 2025— President Trump (R) declared a National Energy Emergency and signed the “Unleashing American Energy” executive order. On February 14, 2025, he created the National Energy Dominance Council, chaired by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum (R), to coordinate permitting and production across agencies. A round of nuclear executive orders followed in May 2025.
We will DRILL, BABY, DRILL, and usher in a golden era of American energy dominance.
Energy Dominance is the foundation of America's economic and national security. Under President Trump, we are unleashing American energy and cutting the red tape that has held our projects hostage for years.
But this is precisely where Zamarin’s argument lands. Executive action can reorder agency priorities, speed reviews, and signal intent. It cannot rewrite NEPA, cannot impose a statutory limit on how long a project can be sued, and cannot bind the next president. An executive order is reversible on day one of the following administration. A statute that passed the House 221-196 with members of both parties is not. Durable reform — the kind that lets a company commit billions to a decade-long pipeline build — has to come from Congress.
The failure here is bipartisan, and that is the honest version of the story. Republicans and Democrats have both, at different moments, chosen the provision they wanted over the bill that could pass. Manchin-Barrasso died in a Democratic-led Senate that would not bring it to the floor. The SPEED Act now waits on a Senate that has to find 60 votes across the aisle. Neither party has clean hands on a problem both parties say they want to fix.
The United States has the gas, the capital, and the engineering to power the AI era. What it does not have is the legal certainty to build the pipelines and transmission lines fast enough — a federal Environmental Impact Statement has averaged about 4.5 years before litigation, and major transmission takes 5 to 10 years to energize. Data centers are projected to consume up to 12% of national electricity by 2028. The build cannot keep pace with the load.
The fix exists: the SPEED Act passed the House 221-196 with bipartisan votes, narrowing NEPA triggers and capping NEPA litigation at 150 days. It awaits 60 votes in the Senate — the same chamber where the Manchin-Barrasso bill died in 2024. As Williams CEO Chad Zamarin argues, no executive order can substitute for a durable statute. Until Congress passes one, “energy dominance” remains a slogan the grid can’t cash.
