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Moderated by JPMorganChase Global Head of Sustainability Heather Zichal, J.P. Morgan Co-Head of Infrastructure Finance and Advisory Fuat Savas and Bipartisan Policy Center’s Xan Fishman discuss what’s working, what’s missing, and what’s next for getting America moving on infrastructure.
May 20, 2026
But there's a hard truth behind the headlines: our permitting system isn't keeping pace with the moment.
For energy transmission, the average timeline to obtain permits stretches to six and a half years, and it can often exceed a decade, according to American Clean Power. And the broader picture is even more sobering — on average, the review and permitting process for major infrastructure projects in the U.S. takes four to five years.
From my time in government and in the private sector, I've seen firsthand how uncertainty, duplication, and delay can stall progress — for communities waiting on cleaner, more reliable power; for companies trying to invest and build; and for a country that cannot afford to fall behind global competitors. These timelines don't just slow projects. They raise costs, strain grid reliability, and risk ceding our competitive edge at the very moment demand is surging.
The good news is there's rare bipartisan agreement that the system is broken. The challenge is turning that consensus into action — reform that is faster, more predictable, and still credible.
So what does that look like in practice? To move from debate to delivery, I sat down with two finance and policy experts to unpack what's broken, what's misunderstood, and what it will take to build at the speed this moment demands.
From my time in government and in the private sector, I've seen firsthand how uncertainty, duplication, and delay can stall progress — for communities waiting on cleaner, more reliable power; for companies trying to invest and build; and for a country that cannot afford to fall behind global competitors.
Heather Zichal
JPMorganChase Global Head of Sustainability
Heather Zichal: Today, I’m joined by J.P. Morgan Co- Head of Infrastructure Finance and Advisory Fuat Savas. Thanks for being here and willing to share what you’re hearing from clients on challenges posed by the permitting process.
Savas: After two decades financing infrastructure projects around the world, I’ve most often seen two key permitting hurdles that can make it harder to build at speed and scale in the U.S. The first is regulatory fragmentation, which makes even economically sound, environmentally responsible projects virtually uninvestable. The second is limited public sector bandwidth that leads to slower processing.
On regulatory fragmentation: if multiple agencies are involved in reviewing and approving a project, often one agency review doesn’t begin until another ends. When that happens, a development period of 4 months can easily stretch into four years. Another fragmentation challenge is state vs. federal stalemates in “cross-border” projects. Pipelines, transmission lines, rail corridors and water systems don’t respect state boundaries, but the U.S. has a system where any single state can veto regional benefits.
Limited public sector bandwidth manifests itself more in municipal permitting. For example, there is a massive investment cycle underway in laying fiber optic cables around the country. It makes sense that such investments would need right of way, excavation and environmental permits. But there is at times a single person tasked with reviewing such applications in a municipality, which draws out the permitting process, leading to ballooning cost and timelines. Unlike most other infrastructure projects, permitting of residential fiber takes place after financing is put in place, leading to compounding costs and ultimately to more expensive projects.
Savas: There are many solutions that are worth considering, but here are two that come to mind:
1. Centralize decision-making within states to have a lead agency empowered to coordinate all state and local permits.
2. Interstate compacts for cross-border infrastructure. For example, a Western States Compact for electricity transmission and generation could create interstate bodies with pre-negotiated review criteria and benefit-sharing frameworks. This would be an interstate version of the infrastructure diplomacy that takes place internationally (e.g., across projects like the Southern Gas Corridor creating an energy network connecting Azerbaijan to Europe).
After two decades financing infrastructure projects around the world, I’ve observed that America doesn’t lack capital, engineering talent, or willpower to build—what it lacks is a clear answer to the question ‘who gets to say yes?
Fuat Savas
J.P. Morgan Co-Head of Infrastructure Finance and Advisory
Heather Zichal: Building on those helpful, practical ideas from Fuat, let’s dive into policy a bit more. While markets allocate capital, policy sets the conditions under which that capital can be deployed.
Permitting isn’t controlled by a single entity but operates through a layered system of federal, state, and local oversight, each with distinct roles. While we have federal level statutes like National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), requiring environmental reviews coordinated across multiple agencies, state governments typically oversee siting decisions and control things like land use. And even when the permit is granted, the opportunity to reopen a case through judicial review can also add years to a process. The result is a highly fragmented system.
Today I’m joined by Bipartisan Policy Center’s Xan Fishman, who specializes in federal permitting reform. Thanks for being here.
Fishman: Permitting matters more now because the current system is increasingly seen as bad for businesses, families, and economic growth—and it’s also not delivering better environmental outcomes. In the past, long reviews helped stop highly polluting projects, but today many projects seeking permits are cleaner, so the cost-benefit balance has shifted and delays often preserve status quo infrastructure.
If we can’t permit efficiently, infrastructure costs rise and we miss out on quality-of-life gains. The process suffers from multiple persistent friction points, as opposed to one fixable bottleneck, so projects can get hung up at many stages—application completeness, multi-agency coordination, dispute resolution, final decisions, and open-ended litigation. The result is prolonged uncertainty that slows needed buildout, delays cleaner tech, and keeps pollution higher than it needs to be.
Fishman: There’s real bipartisan momentum, which makes me optimistic that Democrats and Republicans can align on a better permitting system. The goal is a clear, efficient process that applies the right level of review to the right kinds of projects—quick decisions for straightforward cases and more analysis for complex ones.
Fishman: Big picture, we need a permitting system with clear rules and a predictable timeline so everyone knows what to expect. It should deliver a credible review that protects the environment and human/public safety, and then reach a timely yes-or-no decision. Any litigation should also be structured to give a fair hearing but wrap up quickly. The goal is that within a couple of years a project is either moving into construction or definitively not going forward—without uncertainty dragging on for a decade or more.
Big picture, we need a permitting system with clear rules and a predictable timeline so everyone knows what to expect.
Xan Fishman
Bipartisan Policy Center Vice President of the Energy Program
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