CCL’s position on permitting reform

Hello CCL volunteers!

Many of you have been asking for CCL’s position on the permitting reform bill, The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2022, introduced by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV).

In brief, given how rushed and controversial the bill is, we did not encourage volunteers to take any action for or against the bill at this time. 

As of Tuesday evening, the permitting reform package was removed from the government funding bill, but we may see it reemerge in the coming weeks, so it’s worth catching up on the conversation around this bill and the policy area in general. 

You can watch this training from CCL Research Coordinator Dana Nuccitelli about the importance of permitting reform, or read on for an overview:

CCL supports the goal of quickly building the clean energy economy, and see that we need ways to expedite the build out of clean energy infrastructure if we want to achieve that goal.

As a recent analysis from Princeton’s REPEAT project shows, without quickly expanding our electrical transmission capacity we could miss out on up to 80% of modeled emissions reductions from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). These same limitations would also apply under a carbon fee and dividend system – even with the right economic incentives other factors can stand in the way of deploying clean energy. 

This is a case where a slow bureaucratic process favors the status quo. Our existing infrastructure is based on fossil fuels, and so the slower we build clean energy infrastructure, the more fossil fuels we will extract and burn.

An article in the Atlantic also notes that our current permitting process favors fossil fuel pipelines over electric transmission, saying, “It’s much harder to build transmission than it is to build other types of energy infrastructure. If you want to build a new natural-gas pipeline, for instance, then you only need to go to one place: the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, an independent agency. But if you want to build new transmission, then you need to win the approval of every state, county, city, and in some cases, landowner along the proposed route.”

Many people are saying that the environmental movement has to shift from a focus on blocking bad things to a mode that focuses on building the things we need for a clean energy future.

Sen. Brian Schatz said, at a Washington Post event, “Lots of environmental activism is principled on stopping bad projects from happening. But if we’re actually going to meet our clean energy goals, we have to build things. [...] We have to make it easier to build, especially electricity transmission. So the basic strategy for the grid is to electrify everything and then, over time, to make sure that the electrons going into the grid are increasingly clean. Well, that doesn’t work if it takes 15 years to do a transmission line from the American Southwest to the American Midwest. And so we’re going to have to do permitting reform.” 

This is why CCL supports the goals of clean energy permitting reform – to decarbonize our economy we need to build a lot of things and we need to do so quickly.

In good news, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) includes some permitting reform and the IRA provides close to $1 billion in funding to agencies to help them complete environmental reviews more quickly and thoroughly.

So, what about Senator Manchin’s Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA)?

First, the good stuff. Lots of people really like the section that would allow the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) to authorize interstate electricity transmission projects, which should streamline that process. FERC would also be empowered to determine cost allocations across broad geographic areas so that all who benefit from the added transmission pay their share. FERC’s authority is currently ambiguous or limited in scope, and fights over who will pay for how much of a new transmission line can cause significant project delays. These provisions are supported by Grid Strategies, Americans for Clean Energy Grid, Utility Dive, and American Clean Power.

Another seemingly uncontroversial provision in the bill would designate a lead agency to coordinate any permitting review process among multiple government agencies.

But many aspects of the bill are quite controversial. It would include numerous reforms to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) that attempt to speed the review process. Clean energy advocates appreciate the shortened timelines for approval, but there are concerns that the shortened timelines and other provisions overly restrict the ability of affected communities and tribes to comment on projects that may directly adversely impact them. Also, some fear that the shortened timelines for agency environmental reviews may backfire by forcing rushed and faulty decisions that result in legal challenges that could end up slowing clean energy deployment. 

Then there is the explicit approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which circumvents the normal legal and environmental review process that is currently underway. While emissions from approval of this one pipeline would be much smaller than the benefits from the expedited clean energy deployment, some from local communities are upset over this short circuiting of the review process.

The bill also requires that the President designate 25 projects as being of “strategic national importance,” and those projects are then prioritized by agencies working on their NEPA reviews. People are also concerned that the bill requires that 5 of the 25 projects must relate to fossil fuels or biofuels. It’s unclear how much additional fossil fuel infrastructure this would lock in, or whether that tradeoff is worth the benefits cited above, because this type of policy is very difficult to model.

While CCL supports the goals of speeding the build out of clean energy infrastructure, Manchin’s bill shows that the devil is in the details when it comes to permitting reform. As stated above, this particular bill is not moving forward as part of the government funding package, but we may see it put forward again in the coming weeks after further negotiations. 

So, at this time, we are not encouraging volunteers to take any action for or against the bill. We will continue to research and fully digest the implications of this legislation and educate our volunteers on the topic so we can engage effectively moving forward.

We do encourage Congress to continue working toward legislation that will help expedite building the clean energy economy, while supporting community engagement around the potential impacts from infrastructure.