David Crane: Permitting reform is “missing link” for energy transition

The permitting reform conversation remains far from resolved, and one Biden administration official said it should be a central priority.

• The top line: DOE Undersecretary for Infrastructure David Crane said at this week’s BloombergNEF Summit in New York that permitting reform is the “number one” most important thing that Congress can do to facilitate the energy transition. While Congress has been weighing permitting reform for years — with lynchpin Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) being particularly vocal about its necessity, saying last month that it is the Senate energy committee’s top issue — meaningful progress has remained out of reach.
• The current take: Asked what he would request from lawmakers “if he could wave a magic wand,” Crane said “the missing link so far is permitting reform.” 

In principle, permitting reform could streamline the long process of getting new infrastructure built — and potentially even ameliorating the transmission backlog plaguing the power system. There is no shortage of proposals to reform the process; at least 10 bills have been proposed, though none have emerged from committee review, and it has supporters on both sides of the aisle. However, legislation remains stuck. 

To those “people on the left” who oppose permitting reform because they fear it will lead to more unmitigated building of fossil fuel infrastructure, Crane said that “it seems very clear from my vantage point that what we are hindering is new zero-carbon energy sources.”

Later at the summit, Pedro Pizarro, president and CEO of Edison International, said that most transmission projects are taking about 10-12 years to get built, a figure he based both on the utility’s own experience and by comparing notes with peers in other states and countries. While two to three years of that timeline is typically devoted to construction, he said most of that process is siting and permitting. 

“We are estimating that we’re going to need to see the pace of transmission additions be four times what it's been historically,” he said. “And so we need siting and permitting reform at both the federal and state levels.” 

Pizarro emphasized the need for reform to do three things: 1) streamline and get rid of duplicative reviews, 2) add “shot clocks” to the appeals process so stakeholders “can’t be speaking forever and ever and ever”, and 3) allot additional resources to the agencies responsible for working their way through applications.