Permitting Reform

What does federal permitting cost manufacturers?

$12.1 billion a year nationally, in two parts. The first is getting and keeping permits, the $79.5 billion over ten years ($7.9 billion a year) in the NAM’s study America on Hold: what manufacturers reported spending to get and comply with major and minor air permits, water-discharge permits, environmental assessments and impact statements, wetlands permits, species consultations and historic-preservation reviews. The second is measured separately: the time projects wait past the deadlines in current law (the Fiscal Responsibility Act’s two-year limit for an impact statement and one-year limit for an assessment, the Clean Air Act’s one-year decision clock, the Endangered Species Act’s 135-day consultation, the Corps’ permit targets) and the interconnection, congestion and pipeline costs on manufacturers’ power bills ($4.1 billion a year). The survey did not ask about the cost of waiting, so the second part covers delay costs the first does not. Housing permits are left aside.

What does the all-sectors figure cover?

The same federal permitting costs for the whole economy, every sector, placed in the state where the permitting happens: about $50.2 billion a year nationally. Manufacturers bear $12.1 billion of it; the All sectors tab (and the sub-tile under Total Cost to Manufacturers) show the full figure, the other tabs the manufacturers’ share.

How is the cost placed in the states?

Each national line is placed in the states where manufacturers bear it, so the states add up exactly to the national figure and to the America on Hold figure. Major air and water permits follow EPA’s facility and permit records; the other permit lines follow manufacturing establishments and manufacturing GDP; the waiting cost follows the permit lines it attaches to; the power-bill lines follow manufacturers’ electricity use in each grid region. The keys are proxies for permit counts by state, which no federal source publishes in a loadable form, with weights that are written down and editable.

What does “average per manufacturer” mean?

The state’s manufacturers’ federal permitting cost divided by its manufacturing establishments (Census County Business Patterns 2023), a way to compare states of different sizes. It is an average over every manufacturer, including the many that hold no federal permit; a few large permitted facilities carry most of it. Per worker and share of manufacturing GDP are in the tooltip and the table.

How is BAAJA scored?

The Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA, Senate, introduced 30 September 2026) is scored with its deadlines met in full: every deadline in the bill is met and the whole excess interconnection-queue delay is removed; exclusions, document cost, NPDES terms, litigation, congestion and Section 401 take bounded, sourced shares. For manufacturers the bill saves 35 percent of the cost, nearly all of it from the waiting and power-bill costs ($3.6 billion of $4.1 billion); of the cost of getting and keeping permits it saves 8 percent, because Clean Air Act permits, the largest piece, are not in the bill.

Where do the state notes come from?

The note under the map (and the list at the foot of the section) says what each state’s figure is made of: its two parts, its largest pieces and what BAAJA saves of each part, generated from the line table behind the map.