Regulatory delays and bottlenecks have added millions of pounds of pollutants like PM2.5, NOₓ and CO₂ to our air from the continuation of business as usual, instead of the deployment of clean technologies from my two hardtech efforts alone. While CO₂ is a long-term climate issue, PM2.5 and NOₓ are immediate major drivers of asthma and excess morbidity. Both operations have high bipartisan appeal—and we’ve never been denied a permit—because we’re fundamentally cleaning up things that matter to everyone: dirty air, wildfires, orphaned oil wells. Revoy is also helping deflate the cost of long-haul freight. But none of that has made getting freedom to operate easy. For creative new technologies the default answer is “no” because there isn’t a clear path to permitting at all, and figuring out that path itself takes years — time that startups can’t afford to wait.
Regulation obviously has a critical role in protecting people and the environment, but the sheer volume, over-specificity and sometimes ambiguity of those same regulations is now actively working against those goals! We’re unintentionally blocking the very things that would improve our environment. We’ve become a society that blocks all things, and we need to be a society that builds great things every day. The rest of this article gets very specific about the astronomical costs regulations are imposing on us as a society, and the massive positive impact that could be unleashed by cutting back regulation that is working against new, cost-saving, creative technology that could also be making people and the environment healthy again.