When Permits Aren't Permanent

The United States needs trillions of dollars in new infrastructure investment, but our new report  argues that one of the biggest risks to that investment is hiding in plain sight: what happens after the government says yes.

In When Permits Aren’t Permanent: How Permitting Instability Reaches the American Retirement Portfolio and the Statutory Reforms That Will Restore Investor Confidence, Rainey Center President and CEO Sarah E. Hunt argues that the national permitting debate has focused heavily on how quickly projects receive approval while paying too little attention to whether those approvals remain durable once billions of dollars have been committed.

That distinction matters as the United States faces an estimated $9.1 trillion infrastructure investment need through 2033, alongside rapidly growing demand for electricity from data centers, reshored manufacturing and electrification.

The report argues that the consequences of permitting instability can ultimately reach ordinary Americans. When investors demand a higher return to compensate for authorization risk, the report contends that those costs can flow through to the people who rely on the resulting infrastructure - including ratepayers, tollpayers, taxpayers and retirement savers.