Finding the Goldilocks Zone for Permitting Reform A S Y

A fulsome and transparent community process will also result in better final project planning and reduce potential opposition In April 2023, the Bipartisan Policy Center convened a private workshop that brought together experts from across the political spectrum to explore the pros and cons of specific reforms to improve public engagement and increase the efficiency of the permitting process. [...] NGA is also flexible to handle the blending of hydrogen and natural gas.  In sum, participants recognized the NGA’s utility to meet the needs of hydrogen given the time it would take for Congress to develop a new hydrogen-specific law— and the potential risks that come with Congress writing a new law. [...] However, participants generally agreed that for Congress to reach agreement on broad and meaningful permitting reforms, the package might need to include reforms to the natural gas pipeline permitting process, and that a balance of reforms to enable the build-out of both transmission and natural gas pipelines was likely a political trade that stakeholders on the left and right could back.  34 9 A. [...] The first roundtable focused on public engagement,2 and the second focused on permitting linear infrastructure (i.e., transmission and pipelines).3 The goal of this roundtable was to foster robust discussions on reforming the judicial review process related to permitting, with participants weighing the pros and cons of a variety of policy proposals from across the political spectrum. [...] There is precedent for such limitations: The Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act of 2015 reduced the statute of limitations for projects using the “FAST-41” process to two years, and the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) reduced the statute of limitations for transportation projects to two years.