Santa came a little early this year. Yesterday, the House passed the Speed Act and Mining Regulatory Clarity Act. Both bills passed with strong bipartisan support. NMA president and CEO Rich Nolan called yesterday's vote a huge step forward on permitting reform and urged the Senate to take up these bills when Congress returns from after the holidays.

And the shaky state of the nation's power supply is in the spotlight again with alarming results from the PJM market's latest capacity auction. PJM, the nation's largest electricity market serving 67 million customers, saw capacity prices hit a new record for the third auction in a row.

Despite auction prices hitting a recently installed price cap, the auction failed to procure enough capacity to meet PJM's targeted reliability margin. Driven by the rapid addition of data centers, power demand in PJM continues to outpace efforts to bring new generating capacity to the marketplace.