If you had to guess, which state would you say produces the most renewable energy?

It’s California, right?

With its vast size, sunny weather and crunchy attitude, you wouldn’t be far off. The Golden State falls second. Number one is none other than Texas. How is it possible that the Lone Star State, a stronghold of both conservative politics and oil interests, makes twice as much wind and solar energy as California?

Part of the answer is the weather: Texas is big, sunny and windy. But it’s also because of lax regulations.

However, that same easy regulatory process also means Texas is a leading producer of fossil fuels and only gets about one-quarter of its electricity from renewables.

Making the approval process for new energy projects faster and easier is called “permitting reform.” Nationally, some politicians support changing laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) to make approval processes faster.

But a rigorous permitting process has advantages as well as drawbacks. Forrest Fleischman is a professor of environmental policy in the Department of Forest Resources at the University of Minnesota. A big advantage of NEPA review, Fleischman said, is it requires the government to tell the public what it’s doing.

As an example, Fleischman pointed to a 2012 case where, as part of environmental review, the government had to report it wanted to start flying drones along the U.S.-Canada border.

“I’m not quite sure what the impact of flying Predator drones is on the environment, but it makes me a little uncomfortable that the entire northern border [was included] which, let’s keep in mind, that includes places like the city of Detroit,” Fleischman said. “Our government is flying secret military weapons around there. I’m not sure I want that.”

Fleischman also said public participation is important.

“I have a huge amount of respect for the scientists and experts who work for the federal government, but they don’t know everything,” he said. “The classic example is they’re planning some activity on some land, and there’s a private landowner next to that land, and they say, ‘Wait a minute, don’t you guys realize that X is going on here?’”

Fleischman also pointed to research that found factors like inadequate staffing and other laws, not the rigor of NEPA review, were the real causes of delays.

Finally, Fleischman argued, if we really want to make things faster, exempting clean energy projects from NEPA would be a better idea than weakening the law overall. “You can do that. Congress can do that tomorrow,” he said.

However, NEPA is not the only law holding up clean energy. Madelyn Smerillo is a senior policy associate at the Clean Grid Alliance, an organization that represents a coalition of clean energy companies and nonprofits. They focus on state and local issues, rather than federal policies, Smerillo said.

Smerillo agreed with Fleischman that inadequate funding and staffing were major causes of permitting delays. However, she argued local and state agencies, as well as companies applying for a permit, have to do a lot of redundant work during the permitting process.

For example, power companies have to submit a certificate of need showing there is a need for the power they will produce with a new project. According to Smerillo, so-called “independent power producers” should not need this certificate because they wouldn’t be building if they didn’t already have someone to sell electricity to.

Smerillo also said energy projects should not have to propose more than one site. This is already the case for solar, but currently, many types of projects have to propose two potential sites.

Not only is this an unnecessary hurdle, Smerillo said, but it can also lead to consternation in local communities. “You’re saying, ‘Hey, we might build a transmission line in your neighborhood, but we don’t know,’” Smerillo said.

Smerillo said another barrier is laws around so-called “prime farmland.” This land makes up about 32% of Minnesota and is particularly well-suited for farming. However, in many cases, it’s also well-suited for solar energy.

Minnesota law significantly restricts electricity production on prime farmland, except if there is “no feasible or prudent alternative.” Currently, Smerillo said, state utilities regulators are “consistently having to override” this section because it is actually the case that there aren’t any alternatives.

“The risk,” Smerillo said, “is that if we were to get a [Public Utilities Commission] that was less renewable energy-friendly, it would be possible that they could use this rule against solar projects.”

In my view, one of the biggest risks of permitting reform is that loosening regulations for energy overall will make it easier to build fossil fuels as well as clean energy. Texas, in this case, is not a model. Smerillo is not concerned about this in Minnesota; we already passed a law to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040. But I think it’s still not worth the risk. We should be making clean energy easier to build, and fossil fuels harder.

“I went to college in the late 1990s,” Fleischman said. “We knew we had to be doing this when I was in college. So, to some extent, yes, it takes a little bit of time to plan things. Well, we should have been doing that all along.”

Fleischman is right: we’ve known we have to build clean energy for decades — and Exxon has known for even longer. But where I disagree with him is I think the present situation really does justify speeding up the process. And we definitely need to get rid of redundant and counterproductive regulations. We’re running out the clock on a habitable planet. Let’s act like it.