The Trump administration’s new effort to speed permitting reviews for infrastructure could allow for an easier build-out of massive clean energy projects envisioned by Democrats to decarbonize the economy, such as wind farms and interstate power lines.
“When you think about all of the infrastructure that needs to be financed, permitted, and built to drastically reshape our energy system, there is no doubt our current regulatory framework is not designed to facilitate that kind of transition,” said Sasha Mackler, director of the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “It doesn’t really matter if you are calling for a massive spending plan or an aggressive carbon tax. There is a rationale for doing this, and it’s not nefarious.”
It’s unlikely that the Trump administration considered clean energy as a significant part of its calculus when it decided to propose on Jan. 9 the first reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act in 40 years.
Democrats and environmentalist groups attacked the changes, arguing that the administration’s real intent is to encourage more fossil fuel development while limiting consideration of climate change in permitting reviews.
Yet members of both parties have acknowledged the need to streamline environmental reviews under the act, which are required for federally involved projects such as highways, bridges, pipelines, oil and gas leases, transmission lines, and wind farms.
“Eighty percent of what we talk about here, most Republicans and Democrats would agree with,” said Christy Goldfuss, who led the White House Council on Environmental Quality, which oversees NEPA, under the Obama administration. “We have to get better at building big projects. Since the Hoover Dam, it’s been a serious problem. But gutting the information we need to build that infrastructure is not the way to do it.”
Goldfuss, who now works at the Center for American Progress, opposes aspects of the Trump administration changes that would narrow federal agency consideration of projects’ effects on greenhouse gas emissions and limit the types of projects that require environmental reviews in the first place.
The Bipartisan Policy Center also conceded in its official statement on the changes that “the administration’s constructive proposals are being colored by its irresponsible position on climate change.”
But there is consensus support for critical provisions that seek both to limit reviews to two years, compared to an average of four-and-a-half now, and to centralize sprawling government decision-making for permitting into one agency.
Mackler said simplifying the regulatory process is especially important to build clean energy projects at scale when “time is not on our side right now when we think about the challenge of decarbonization.”
At least some clean energy industry groups agree.
Amy Farrell, senior vice president of government and public affairs for the American Wind Energy Association, said NEPA had hindered the construction of wind farms and interstate power lines that could transport renewable power from rural producing areas to urban consuming ones.
“It is time to update and modernize the permitting process,” Farrell said. “Infrastructure projects, including land-based and offshore wind energy and transmission development, have encountered unreasonable and unnecessary costs and long project delays.”
Other critical emerging low-carbon technologies could also benefit from a more straightforward environmental permitting process.
For example, carbon capture and sequestration projects will require the construction of nearby pipelines to transport captured carbon that can be reused for other commercial purposes.
Building more railways would help electrify the transportation system.
New facilities will need to be built to power small, advanced nuclear reactors, which are still being developed.
And permitting delays could jeopardize the rise of America’s offshore wind industry. U.S. offshore wind is still in its infancy, with only one operating wind farm, but it could take off soon with projects proposed off the East Coast for Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Maine that could power millions of homes.
Policymakers will also have to prioritize adapting existing infrastructure to extreme weather worsened by climate change, raising street levels and homes to prevent flooding, and installing sea walls in coastal areas.
“NEPA doesn’t touch everything,” Mackler said. “It’s not the end of the story when it comes to permitting reform. But a climate strategy designed for success needs to address NEPA.”
