The world is currently entering a volatile new era of energy insecurity. As Russia continues to weaponize its energy resources against its neighbors and conflicts in the Middle East threaten vital shipping routes, nations across Europe and Asia are searching for stable, reliable suppliers. In this environment, the United States has the opportunity to be the guarantor of global energy security, the most reliable energy partner — provided it can overcome its own domestic bureaucratic hurdles.America is home to an abundance of natural gas and other energy resources. In the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, allies like Germany and Poland made the strategic decision to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, placing their trust in American energy instead. While expanding energy exports is a critical tool for strengthening partners and reducing the leverage of adversarial suppliers, this strategy is only successful if we can actually build the pipelines, export facilities, and transmission lines required to deliver that energy.
Reliability serves as the bedrock of energy security, yet our own domestic policies are currently undermining America’s ability to be a stable partner. The core challenge facing the U.S. is not a lack of resources, but a chronic failure of getting energy where it needs to go — be it Boston or Berlin. Over recent decades, the U.S. permitting system has devolved into a state of bureaucratic dysfunction, where projects that used to take years now take decades to complete. It can currently take 12 to 15 years to permit critical infrastructure like transmission lines or mining projects. Consequently, America has become exceptionally good at producing all types of energy but exceptionally poor at moving it.
