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President Joe Biden missed a critical opportunity during his State of the Union address on Tuesday. In touting the bipartisan infrastructure law, he directed a comment towards Republicans – “I’ll see you at the groundbreaking.”
In reality, breaking ground on anything will need a permit, and we unfortunately did not hear a plan to fix the permitting crisis. Reducing carbon emissions in the U.S. to net zero is actually achievable.
Done right, we could improve American energy security and be even more competitive in the global energy market. Europe is scrambling to keep pace with America’s new clean energy incentives. Parts of Asia, Africa and the Middle East have no electricity today while others are growing so fast they will need orders of magnitude more power. These are big challenges, but there is a political path forward to make more energy for the world, and make it cleaner. To have a chance at success, the U.S. must change how it permits the construction of clean energy projects.
Biden highlighted the past five years have yielded some of the most significant bipartisan innovation and climate policies in our nation’s history, increasing investments in energy infrastructure.
In November 2021, Congress enacted the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), which funded a wide range of clean energy demonstration programs, including carbon capture, direct air capture, energy storage, geothermal, hydrogen, and industrial. The IIJA built on many of the technology moonshots authorized in the Energy Act of 2020, which Congress passed and then-President Donald Trump signed into law.
In August 2022, Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act, a bill to support the U.S. semiconductor industry, which included bipartisan efforts to bolster scientific research, American manufacturing, strengthen supply chains, modernize the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and decarbonize the steel sector. As our tensions with China increase, this bipartisan bill should put us on a more competitive path.
Congress also amended existing tax credits and established additional new incentives for clean energy development. While the process that led to enactment was partisan, for years, Republicans and Democrats worked together to incentivize investment in nascent technologies, bolster the 45Q carbon capture credit, and support new and existing American nuclear generation.
A modernized approach to permitting energy projects and transmission infrastructure is the linchpin for all of these policies. Project developers want to move quickly to take advantage of tax credits before they expire. And we must balance speed and safety concerns, ensuring we can get approved projects built faster, while avoiding environmental harm.
The Biden administration is already in the process of implementing these bills. Yet, without constructive congressional oversight, and improvements to our regulatory system, we only slow down our technology head start over China, Russia or other rapidly growing nations.
We are on the verge of thousands of miles of carbon dioxide pipelines and new transmission lines, hundreds of square miles of more renewables and new liquefied natural gas export terminals. But it can take up to a decade to get projects like these even started. These delays are unacceptable.
While Biden didn’t mention it in his State of the Union address, there is a three-part balanced plan to modernize permitting that gets clean power onto the grid sooner, while protecting the safety of our communities.
First, grant immediate approvals where no harm exists. Providing immediate approvals for categories of projects where environmental impacts are well understood to be minimal, given either the nature of the project or its location, is a no-brainer. One example might be a zero-emissions nuclear or solar project proposed to be built on the site of a former coal-fired power plant. Congress should establish approval criteria that enable this type of project clearance without delay.
Second, carefully streamline approvals where there is limited environmental impact. For projects that may cause unique or significant environmental impacts, the review process should focus on understanding the local conditions and needed protections while still permitting the project on an accelerated timeline. The U.S. has one of the most stringent regulatory systems in the world, and an accelerated timeline would still require compliance with existing environmental protections.
Third, resolve legal disputes in less than one year. There should be accelerated legal reviews once a project is approved. Any further adjudications for clean energy projects must include a final decision timeline of well under one year to ensure that protracted litigation does not undermine project viability.
House Republicans have put permitting at the center of their energy plan. They’ve also drawn a line in the sand on fiscal restraint making bipartisan permitting reform the best option to build on America’s clean energy leadership.
The financial incentives are there to build more clean energy, but each project starts with a permit. It’s time to build cleaner, faster.
Rich Powell is CEO of ClearPath, a Washington, D.C.–based nonprofit that develops and advances policies that accelerate breakthrough innovations to reduce emissions in the energy and industrial sectors.
