Polis Urges FAST-41 to Cut Grid Permitting Bottlenecks

The parking lot outside the Denver workshop was full of electric vehicles, but the conversation inside wasn’t about charging stations. It was about wires. Specifically, the thousands of miles of them that need to stretch across a state that is suddenly, and aggressively, running out of room on its existing grid.

Governor Jared Polis stood at the podium in October, looking out at a room of engineers and politicians who all knew the math was getting tight. He didn’t mince words about the bottleneck. Permitting, he argued, is moving too slowly for a state that needs to keep its lights on and its economy humming.

“We want a lower cost grid, we want a more resilient and reliable grid, and transmission is absolutely critical to achieve that,” Polis said. “My fellow governors and I are committed to working together to find practical and bipartisan solutions that can improve the grid and expand transmission infrastructure to truly achieve energy superabundance.”

That last phrase — “energy superabundance” — is the new buzzword in Western politics. It’s not just about building more solar panels or drilling for more gas. It’s about having enough of everything, all at once, to handle the future.

The Western Governors’ Association put out a landmark report last month that laid this out clearly. The West is heading toward an energy deficit. Demand is up. Supply is struggling to keep pace. Utah Governor Spencer Cox, a Republican and the WGA chair, called it “the harsh reality” in the report. We need significantly more power.

Cox, who has been working closely with Polis on this issue, isn’t just talking about wind and solar. The report calls for harnessing oil, natural gas, geothermal, and nuclear. It’s a “all of the above” strategy for a region that can’t afford to pick sides.

But here is the part everyone skips past when they hear “energy superabundance”: how do we get from here to there without waiting a decade for permits?

Polis has a tool right in his pocket. He should join Cox in a bipartisan permitting initiative called FAST-41.

It’s not new. Congress established it in 2015 with broad support, including then-Congressman Polis himself. President Barack Obama signed it into law. It’s a process coordination tool for major infrastructure projects, designed to cut through the red tape that has slowed down transmission lines for years.

When a project enrolls in FAST-41, it gets a single permitting schedule. A lead agency quarterbacks the process. Dedicated staff are assigned to each project. If agencies disagree, there’s a dispute resolution process to keep things moving. Accountability is built into the system.

And that matters because, in Colorado alone, Western power grid officials are projecting a 45% increase in electricity demand by 2035.

That’s not a small number. It requires almost 1,000 miles of new transmission lines to connect the places where power is generated, often in the rural west and north - to the communities where it’s consumed, like Denver, Colorado Springs, and the Western Slope.

The author of the opinion piece in the Colorado Sun notes that while they disagree with Polis on many energy policy issues, he is right about permitting. The former Republican state legislator from the Eastern Plains argues that Polis can take more action quickly to make Coloradans better off, regardless of whether they favor wind, solar, or fossil fuels.

This isn’t just about big utility companies. It’s about the cost of living for neighbors in Grand Junction, in Durango, and out along Highway 40. When transmission lines are delayed by permitting bottlenecks, costs go up. When they move faster, prices stabilize.

Polis drew attention to these bottlenecks during that October workshop in Denver. He didn’t just point them out; he offered a path forward. By joining FAST-41, Colorado can align itself with its Western neighbors, creating a regional approach to energy that is practical and bipartisan.

Stand there long enough and you can see the tension between the old way of doing things; permit by permit, agency by agency, and the new promise of FAST-41. It’s a single schedule. A public online tracker. Clear accountability.

The lights need to stay on. The grid needs to be resilient. And the permits need to move faster than they have in recent years.