Op-Ed: François Poirier: How to energize America’s future
Permitting reform is key to America's energy future, and François Poirier explains why.
Imagine opening your power bill and seeing it going down instead of up. Imagine filling up your truck for less, heating your home without worry, and knowing your job at the factory is secure because America is building again.
Picture an America that leads the world in AI, advanced manufacturing, and military strength — powered by the country’s own abundant energy. Imagine America building power plants faster than China. This is the future that Americans want and deserve, and the single greatest obstacle standing in the way is a broken permitting system that keeps shovels idle instead of breaking ground.
Project delays have real consequences for the American people. When a proposed pipeline or transmission line gets trapped in endless reviews, families pay more at the pump and the meter because projects that otherwise meet every safety and environmental standard languish in agency review for years. Factory jobs vanish or move overseas, data centers fuel China’s tech boom instead of the United States’ and the country’s national security is undermined.
The contrast with global competitors is stark: in 2024 alone, China added 429 GW of electricity capacity — nearly nine times the U.S. total of 48.6 GW — building faster and at continental scale while America remains constrained by process. There is an alarming mismatch between soaring demand and stalled infrastructure. U.S. natural gas demand surged 56 percent from 2010 to 2022, yet pipeline capacity grew only 27 percent and storage just 12 percent over that period, driving prices higher and risking reliability.
Looking ahead, the challenges confronting the U.S. energy sector are intensifying. As highlighted in the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s (NERC) recently released 2024-2025 Winter Reliability Assessment, multiple regions across the United States face elevated risks of energy shortfalls. This growing vulnerability underscores the urgency of the situation, with electricity demand in 2026 projected to increase 5 percent from 2024 — driven by the rapid expansion of AI data centers, a resurgence in domestic manufacturing, and ongoing residential development.
These factors are expected to add 3.3 billion cubic feet per day of new natural gas demand by 2030. Presently, power generation accounts for more than 42 percent of total U.S. natural gas consumption, and the resulting infrastructure constraints to end markets are contributing to price volatility and reliability concerns. Without accelerated infrastructure development, households and businesses will continue to face escalating costs and risks associated with these permitting bottlenecks.
Permitting reform is about your wallet, your job, your kids’ future, and the United States remaining number one. It’s how America wins the AI and technology race, powers reindustrialization, lowers energy bills, fuels the factories and supercomputers that will drive innovation and secure the nation’s defense, and show the world America is in charge of its own destiny.
Significant steps have already been taken to reinvigorate the energy industry. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is taking steps to move energy infrastructure forward, with its recent move to consider streamlining certain LNG approvals being the latest example.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the resulting geopolitical shocks, U.S. LNG exports became Europe’s top supplier as Russia’s gas share fell from 40 percent in 2021 to 18 percent in 2024. The U.S. could do more, but permitting delays are making it harder. Meaningful reform across all agencies is the next decisive step.
That’s the why. And recently, the National Petroleum Council (NPC) delivered the how.
“Bottleneck to Breakthrough: A Permitting Blueprint to Build,” the report requested by Secretary Chris Wright, is an actionable blueprint to fix the permitting system — grounded in our practical real-world experience.
The recommendations lay out immediate, common-sense reforms that cut red tape without cutting corners on safety or the environment.
Refocus NEPA on direct project-related effects, not speculative impacts. Curb activist lawsuits from holding approved projects hostage for years. Keep extraneous issues like climate change outside of state water quality reviews and enforce the one-year review period in federal law. Modernize FERC proceedings to green-light essential expansions quickly and enforce 90-day final decisions and create a reimagined pathway for linear infrastructure: if a qualified project meets clear standards upfront, it moves — full speed ahead, with continuous monitoring instead of redundant case-by-case reviews.
These ideas shouldn’t be political. They’re commonsense changes that benefit all forms of energy — natural gas, nuclear, renewables (i.e., wind, solar), and transmission alike. Wind and solar projects face the same kinds of delays as oil and natural gas infrastructure do. Streamlined permitting will accelerate deployment of every energy source.
Making government work better in response to rising demand should unite red states and blue, rural families and urban factories — because every form of energy needs to be built. Far from lowering standards, faster permitting accelerates genuine environmental progress by enabling cleaner, more efficient infrastructure to come online sooner, replacing aging assets with state-of-the-art systems.
The roadmap is clear. By acting decisively — building on the momentum already underway — we can lower utility bills, power American reindustrialization, win the AI and technology race against China and deliver abundant, affordable energy for generations to come. The choice is simple: keep paying more while adversaries surge ahead, or fix permitting and unleash the greatest energy comeback in history.
Now is the time to unleash American energy. Let’s build.
To learn more about the NPC’s report, visit TC Energy’s website here.
François Poirier is the President and Chief Executive Officer of TC Energy.