Inside EPA's Climate Extra is reporting that Senators on both sides of the aisle might try to make it easier to construct all that renewable energy and other infrastructure it already decided to buy when it passed the Inflation Reduction Act. That's welcome news since the funding authorized doesn't do any good unless it results in actual projects. And, if you believe the scientists, we're not going to get to our renewable energy future in time if we don't change the rules for permitting major infrastructure.

That doesn't mean that we should copy China's environmental review playbook. But it can't take a decade or more, as it currently does, to navigate National Environmental Policy Act review, Federal, State and Local permitting, and the inevitable litigation over every Governmental decision relating to a major project. That's currently the fate of countless generation and transmission projects from coast to coast.

So kudos to the Senators and Representatives on both sides of the aisle tackling this critically important challenge.

Representative Scott Peters of California is quoted by Inside EPA as saying that permitting is also a state and local problem and “not a problem Washington can solve on its own.” The first part of that statement accurately reflects the current state of affairs. But for us to get where the scientists say we need to get in the time in which they say we need to get there, Congress needs to consider whether further preemptive legislation is necessary to minimize the "state and local problem."

Senators from both parties are pledging to re-engage on permit streamlining policy for clean energy and other projects after similar efforts failed last Congress, with the ultimate route to enactment of a deal unclear but multiple Senate committees planning hearings on the issue.

“This is a defining moment,” Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Joe Manchin (D-WV) said during an April 18 event hosted by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce at its Washington, D.C., headquarters. The group is launching a campaign to enact permit streamlining policy, dubbed “Permit America to Build.”

Last year, “we missed a golden opportunity . . . now we have this year,” Manchin said. Now is the time to move on permitting because it would be harder to make permitting a “front burner” issue in the presidential election year of 2024, he added.

https://insideepa.com/daily-news/hill-lawmakers-pledge-redouble-debate-permit-streamlining-bill