Bangladesh, Sept. 20 -- The United States is entering a period in which electricity demand, technological competition and infrastructure requirements are converging at unprecedented speed. Artificial intelligence data centers, advanced manufacturing, electrification and emerging energy technologies are all demanding more power. Yet the country's ability to build the infrastructure needed to supply that power remains constrained by a permitting system that can turn years of construction into decades of waiting.

That contradiction is now moving closer to the center of the U.S. Senate's agenda.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has indicated that he wants lawmakers to take up permitting reform before Congress breaks for the fall campaign ...