A Progressive Take on Permitting Reform: Principles and Policies to Unleash a Faster, More Equitable Green Transition

Introduction

A just and sustainable energy transition that keeps us in line with climate targets will require extensive build-out of energy infrastructure. Decades of delay in addressing the climate crisis mean that the United States must move at an even faster clip to deliver the renewable energy infrastructures needed to ensure a livable future. This is an enormous undertaking that will have implications for communities, landscapes, and environments across the US. The energy transition has started to proliferate throughout the country, but often still moves far too slowly to achieve climate targets. While the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) in 2022 has provided a new influx of funding to build renewable energy infrastructure, climate advocates are now navigating how to use that funding quickly and equitably.

Some advocates believe that the fastest way to unleash the renewable energy build-out is to “cut red tape” and “reduce bureaucracy”—largely focusing on the process of reviewing and permitting projects. For example, according to Xan Fishman from Bipartisan Policy Center, “The only thing standing between us and our affordable, clean energy future is a completely broken permitting process” (Fishman 2023).

However, this claim is not reflective of the realities renewable energy infrastructure developers face. In some cases, advocates of permitting reform as a means to speed up climate mitigation conflate issues of permitting—such as reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—with other issues holding back the renewable energy transition. For example, many project delays stem from challenges with transmission planning or the interconnection process, which is privately managed by electric utility system operators.

What’s more, cutting what is perceived as “red tape” for the transition may mean harming the same communities that experience the burden of the existing fossil energy system. When projects—even clean energy projects—do not go through robust environmental review, they risk having negative impacts such as air or water pollution, economic burden, or biodiversity loss.

Furthermore, the oil and gas industry has leveraged the permitting discussion as “a decoy for ramping up gas” (Harris and Rock 2022). The industry has been one of the main political powers behind the push for permitting reform, using it to dismantle the US’s few safeguards against fossil fuel pollution instead of addressing the key forces that slow a transition to renewables. Much of the permitting reform proposed in Congress over the past few years disproportionately supports fossil fuel projects, and extractive industries have been primary proponents of the changes because of their increasing trouble obtaining environmental permits and approval.

Permitting reform hit the national stage in the wake of the IRA. Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) held up the major investment package for almost a year, finally striking a deal in July 2022 with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who agreed to lower the investment package’s ambition and pass a permitting reform bill that also fast-tracked the Mountain Valley Pipeline (Snell 2022). Environmental justice advocates fought vehemently against the permitting bill, calling it “Manchin’s Dirty Deal” and criticizing it for gutting bedrock environmental laws and providing massive giveaways to the fossil fuel industry.

The environmental justice community was able to kill the “Dirty Deal” three times, but ultimately, in June 2023, a significant portion of its permitting reforms passed as part of debt ceiling negotiations. The resulting law, the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, amends NEPA and limits the types of projects over which it has oversight, creating arbitrary deadlines for environmental reviews with no corresponding agency investment and increasing the ability for project developers to sue agencies. The law also fast-tracks Senator Manchin’s Mountain Valley Pipeline—a project that extends the lifetime of fossil fuels and hurts the US’s ability to meet climate targets. The law’s permitting reforms will not support a dramatic or equitable ramp-up of renewable energy, and instead will weaken bedrock environmental and procedural safeguards.

In this report, we explain what the United States must do to effectively and equitably drive the era of renewable energy. First, we define permitting and categorize the different types of permitting and review necessary for building energy-related infrastructure. Second, we articulate why focusing on permitting reform obfuscates some of the real causes of slow renewable deployment, and describe the forces we believe slow the build-out of energy infrastructure. Third, we outline principles that should underpin a just, green transition at the scale and speed needed to address the climate crisis. And finally, we offer a suite of policy recommendations that could accelerate the transition without undermining bedrock environmental laws.

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