“One of things that’s holding you all up, the state up and others up for building is the permitting process,” she said. “The regulatory morass of trying to build something in this country is just ridiculous. It’s overburdened, it’s timely, it’s costly and some people just give up.”

Capito cited the Mountain Valley Pipeline, the natural gas project that faced years of delays due to lawsuits from environmental groups and ultimately required an act of Congress to be completed.

“Even though it sat there 95% complete,” she said.

Capito said she hopes her committee can produce a bill with “reasonable deadlines” that treats all types of energy projects the same.

“If you’re building a solar farm or if you’re building a natural gas pipeline or you’re doing a coal mine, if you can get the permit you can go,” she said. “Quite honestly, the Biden administration had their foot on the scale for all renewables, and that’s where we ended up having even more time and more projects canceled and less energy.”

The country is expected to require more energy than ever before to power data centers and AI systems, making permitting reform even more important, she said.

“We’re going to have a shortage of power if we cannot permit and we cannot move forward with energy development,” Capito said. “We have the resources here in this country, but we’ve got to get to permitting.”

Capito said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the ranking member on the committee, also supports reform.

“He and I are rolling up our sleeves and trying to find a solution,” she said. “He can’t get his solar panels built and I can’t get my coal mines open, or my natural gas pipelines or my wind farms if we can’t get this permitting done.”