The US government is instigating permitting reforms that will enable faster build-out of clean energy infrastructure in the country.
The Biden-Harris administration’s recommendations to streamline the permitting process include improving consenting efficiency and predictability.
In order to build infrastructure expediently and responsibly, the necessary reviews, permits and approvals need to be robust, be completed within a predictable timeframe, and result in prompt and legally defensible decisions.
To facilitate this process, The White House said that Congress should act to further improve coordination of federal data sharing and reviews, expand the use of programmatic and tiered reviews, reduce the length of federal decision documents, and set reasonable decision time frames for projects.
In making these reforms, Congress should create a fund to provide the resources to execute more programmatic reviews – which can allow environmental review work to be re-used for multiple projects – by authorising agencies to impose a fee on project sponsors to cover costs associated with a study upon which their project relies.
Congress should also support long-term programmatic review use to clarify that it may be relied upon for five years, unless there are new circumstances and that the analysis should be able to be relied upon after five years so long as the agency re-evaluates the study and finds that it continues to sufficiently analyse the project’s effects.
The White House also wants to expand responsible use of administrative categorical exclusions.
Congress should require Federal agencies to examine and propose the use of categorical exclusions for clean energy projects where feasible.
More than 95% of Federal actions are already approved under the most expedited form of environmental reviews, which enables speedier reviews for projects that have minimal impact on the environment and public health.