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Arizona and the nation face surging energy demand. AI, data centers, domestic reshoring, and economic growth are stretching our grid. Advanced nuclear reactors are ready to deliver the clean, reliable, and abundant power we need. But regulatory red tape and excessive public process threaten to stand in the way.

Today鈥檚 permitting system too often prioritizes procedure over outcomes, adding unnecessary steps that slow progress and derail major projects. Public input is essential, but the effort to democratize the process has gone too far. A vocal minority with no capital invested in a project can now block even the most widely supported proposals, weaponizing public comments, exploiting environmental reviews, and abusing land use appeals to drive up costs and deny critical permits.

No energy source is immune.

In Massachusetts, just a few dozen affluent homeowners derailed a major offshore wind project, Cape Wind, by filing 26 lawsuits and fighting it for nearly 16 years. Though they publicly supported renewable energy, they opposed this project because it threatened their property values and views, placing personal interests above their stated cause and exhausting every avenue until the project collapsed.

In Tennessee, residents who generally support fossil fuels opposed a new coal-fired power plant that the Tennessee Valley Authority proposed to meet rising demand. They mobilized against it and used local permitting objections to slow the project in the very community it was meant to serve.

Arizona has seen the same abuse. In southern Arizona, a small group of residents who otherwise support renewable energy repeatedly used the public process to delay SunZia, a critical high-voltage transmission line needed to deliver renewable power from New Mexico. For more than seven years, local activists opposed the clean energy project to stop it from being built in their backyards.

In Mohave County, NIMBYism cut across both energy types. First, residents demanded a countywide moratorium on new solar development. Then, when the local electric cooperative proposed a natural gas expansion to meet growing demand, many of the same residents turned against that project as well, flooding the planning and zoning process with protests and forcing the utility to find a new site.

This is why we struggle to build in America. What began as a good-faith effort to democratize permitting has devolved into endless procedural abuse. It no longer serves a modern economy. These objections are often less about environmental protection or responsible development than about protecting personal interests and stopping projects altogether, raising risks for developers while weakening our national economy and security.

Nowhere is that risk greater than with new nuclear reactors.

According to senior officials at the U.S. Department of Energy, the nuclear sector must navigate more regulatory steps than any other energy infrastructure sector in the nation, with at least 14 points of public input across federal, state, and local levels combined.

At the federal level, these include hearings, comment periods, challenges, and appeals on NEPA environmental impact statements, Nuclear Regulatory Commission license applications, and site suitability reviews for nuclear waste storage.

At the state level, they include hearings, interventions, and appeals before the Arizona Power Plant & Transmission Line Siting Committee, Corporation Commission, and Department of Environmental Quality for certificates of environmental compatibility and air and water quality permits.

At the local level, they include hearings, comments, and appeals involving decisions by planning and zoning commissions, boards of supervisors, and city councils on rezonings, special use permits, or general plan amendments.

Each step creates another opportunity for delay, opening the door to self-interested property owners, outside special-interest groups, anti-competitive business rivals, and even hostile foreign adversaries to block critical projects by adding time, cost, and legal risk, including nuclear projects that most Americans support.

Recent events show how steep the climb already is. When Arizona鈥檚 three largest electric utilities announced plans to explore a new nuclear plant, residents protested outside Tucson Electric Power鈥檚 headquarters, and that was before a site had even been selected.

Thoughtful public comment remains essential and can improve a project鈥檚 design or location. But providing endless points for delay and opposition is neither constructive nor democratic. It wastes time and does more to stall or kill projects than improve them. Given that advanced reactors are safer and smaller than older designs, the current process already offers more opportunities for public participation than most projects reasonably require.

If we want to usher in a new era of energy abundance, unleash economic prosperity, restore domestic manufacturing, and win the AI arms race against China, we must support rapid deployment of advanced nuclear technology and reevaluate the permitting system that now threatens American economic power and leadership.

As leaders, our goal should be simple: Everyone should have a voice, but no one should have a veto. Arizona can preserve democratic process while delivering decisive nuclear deployment. It鈥檚 time to support advanced reactors and eliminate the endless proceduralism standing in the way of America鈥檚 clean, prosperous, and abundant energy future.

Michael Carbone is a Republican member of the Arizona House of Representatives representing Legislative District 25 and serves as House Majority Leader. Follow him on X at @MichaelCarbone.