How the White House Intends to Expedite Clean Energy Approval
The Bipartisan Infrastructure Agreement is allocating billions of dollars to infrastructure projects, including renewable power. Following this, the Biden admin has announced a plan to expedite the licensing and environmental assessment processes.
The plan prioritizes cross-agency collaboration, clearly defined deadlines, early stakeholder involvement, agency compliance, and priority environmental evaluations. Taken as a whole, the White House believes the program would deliver infrastructure upgrades on time, on budget, and without excessive bureaucratic red tape.
The $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation, enacted last November, was a huge triumph for President Joe Biden. President Biden has previously been hampered by legislative obstacles on key items on the agenda, such as the $550 billion for sustainable energy laid out in the now-dead reintegration plan.
The authorizing action plan integrates existing permitting officials with new Bipartisan Infrastructure Law safeguards. This includes the new FAST=41 criteria and authorities for covered initiatives in clean energy or conventional power generation, electricity transmission, and water management, among other sectors.
The FAST Act, which was signed into law in 2015, established a new governance structure, protocols, and financing authority to improve the federal environmental evaluation and authorization procedures for specific projects.
The White House has also gathered a group of industry leaders to discuss offshore wind energy and distribution and onshore sustainable power and transmission. Essential mineral production and distribution, transportation, communications, and climate-smart facilities will also be discussed.
According to the preliminary report, the Department of Energy is developing a BBG effort, which is described as a synchronized transmission deployment strategy aimed at assisting the nation in the construction of a long-distance, high-voltage transmission system.
The plan will leverage cash from the bipartisan infrastructure bill to build thousands of miles of transmission systems capable of transporting energy from renewable sources to key consumption points.
According to various analyses, the country will need to quadruple or triple its electric power transmission capability to fulfill Biden’s 2050 economy-wide decarbonization goal.
Furthermore, the DOE initiative aims to expedite the federal approval process for transmission assets by identifying national zones in capacity-constrained locations and leveraging public-private collaborations to promote renovations and major programs. Transmission development, testing, and pilot projects will also be supported by the grid effort.
Finally, the USDA is also developing a rural energy pilot program with $10 million in available funding to assist underprivileged regions in deploying community-scale renewable energy solutions.
