cover image: America’s Clean Energy Transition Requires Permitting Reform Policy Recommendations for Success

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America’s Clean Energy Transition Requires Permitting Reform Policy Recommendations for Success

21 Sep 2022

The Biden Administration and the Democratic-controlled Congress have earned plaudits for enacting unprecedented funding for clean energy incentives and climate protection. These include provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure law (IIJA), the U.S. competitiveness legislation (CHIPS), sections of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), and other legislation, totaling approximately $514 billion in new spending on clean energy and climate, not including other related infrastructure funding. Taken together, these new laws represent the greatest investment in new U.S. energy infrastructure in nearly a century. And yet, because of regulatory roadblocks and nuisance litigation, it is unclear that this new funding will deliver on its two policy goals: 1) Rapid, low-cost build out of a powerhouse, world-leading U.S. clean energy sector. 2) Large reductions in domestic greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) necessary to put the U.S. in a vanguard position to force emissions reductions by other key emitting nations globally. Our report describes in depth the ways in which our current regulatory systems are fundamentally broken, and concludes with the following recommendations to Congress for accelerating government reviews and permitting, including: Pass the Manchin-Schumer Permitting Proposal; Pass the SITE Act; and Prevent New Regulations from Hindering New Technology.
clean energy

Authors

Paul Bledsoe, Elan Sykes

Published in
United States of America