Though much of the ink regarding the environmental provisions of the new debt ceiling deal is about the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, parts of the new legislation will make it “marginally easier” to build clean energy projects, according to AP. But the deal also kicked the issue of making it easier to build high-capacity transmission lines down the curb.
The legislation includes tenets to speed up the permitting process for infrastructure projects under the National Energy Policy Act. This applies, though, both to clean energy projects, as well as fossil fuel projects. NEPA studies, say experts, are always a huge hassle to getting any project approved. The new legislation removes some of those barriers to make permitting easier.
Quoted in a Reuters story about the debt ceiling deal, Jason Grumet, president of American Clean Power, says, the new legislation is an “important down payment on much-needed reforms to improve the efficiency of the permitting process.”
Greg Zimmerman is senior contributing editor for FacilitiesNet.com and Building Operating Management magazine.
