Thomas J. Donohue, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has written a post on the Chamber’s official webpage, advising that the permitting process for renewable energy projects should be swift and safe, taking the Cape Wind case as an example of a lengthy process hindered by environmental reviews and legal challenges.
He highlighted that there are hundreds of other critical energy and infrastructure projects caught in the same situation. The U.S. Chamber’s sweeping study from 2010 found that 351 projects had been stalled or stopped. Renewable energy projects accounted for nearly half of these. With no firm deadlines for environmental reviews and legal challenges, projects can be stopped, delayed, or litigated indefinitely, Donohue explained.
“To halt progress, activist groups get zoning laws changed, oppose permits, file lawsuits, and bleed projects dry of their financing,” he said.
“You’d think that environmentalists would be for projects that advance alternative sources of energy. Unfortunately, the build-absolutely-nothing-anywhere-near-anything (BANANAs) mentality is pervasive.
“This mentality is also costly. The study found that those 351 projects together held an economic value of more than $1 trillion and the potential to create 1.9 million American jobs.”
Opponents of energy and infrastructure development present a false choice, Donohue said. Americans do not have to choose between the environment and the economic boost and jobs that new projects will drive, as well as between speed and safety. “ We can have both ‒ but we need a permitting process that works.”
To help address this challenge, bipartisan lawmakers in the Senate have put forward the Federal Permitting Improvement Act that would preserve environmental safeguards while streamlining the process.
According to Donohue, the bill would improve coordination between the various federal agencies that review and approve projects by appointing a lead agency and eliminating redundancies in the process. It would set deadlines for permitting decisions and a statute of limitations for legal challenges. And it would enhance transparency and accountability, allowing the public to track a project’s application status and see when an agency misses a deadline.
A similar bipartisan bill called The RAPID Act is advancing in the House.
“Commonsense reforms to the permitting process would ensure that the environment is protected while giving businesses greater certainty and confidence to invest in job-creating projects. And if we successfully tackle this challenge ‒ if we make our system swift but safe ‒ we can help restore our nation’s ability to do, and build, great things,” Donohue concluded.
Image: Ian Wagreich/ © U.S. Chamber