A close look at the bipartisan Senate permitting legislation shows that developers of big energy projects could anticipate less litigation if it becomes law, Stephen Lee and Taylor Mills report.

One goal of the measure unveiled last week is less uncertainty when a new administration takes over — and therefore fewer court battles, said Sarah Hunt, president of the Joseph Rainey Center for Public Policy. Fewer, “but not none,” she said.

The legislative language partly seems to be a reaction to the Trump administration canceling finalized renewable energy permits.

The changes proposed in the bill “should mean fewer fights over whether an administration can kill a fully permitted project, because it means a permit could be pulled for only a few narrow reasons, and the government would have to prove it,” said Marcella Burke, a former top official at the EPA and Interior Department during the first Trump administration. “But it won’t stop litigation.”