The Department of Energy finally streamlines permitting requests and requires only one environmental impact statement for each project. Transmission lines carrying renewable energy. Photo: Shutterstock/lovelyday12 The U.S. Department of Energy will become a "one-stop-shop" for permits for new electricity transmission projects under a rule announced by the Biden administration. The move is intended to make building green energy projects simpler and faster, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm told reporters. The rule will create a new program, the Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorization and Permits (CITAP), which will be the lead agency handling permits for new energy projects. Applicants will have to prepare only a single environmental impact statement for all their federal authorizations. The federal government will be required to respond to applications within a fixed deadline. That’s a marked difference from the current process, which requires a wide range of permits from a variety of agencies, depending on the specific project. "CITAP is going to make the federal permitting process for transmission infrastructure more efficient and effective," said Granholm. CITAP will help energy infrastructure builders meet the 91 gigawatts of demand growth expected in the next decade. CITAP will work in three ways: "This is a huge improvement from the status quo, because developers routinely have to navigate several independent permitting processes throughout the federal government," said Granholm. "Implementing a one-stop-shop for agency reviews and setting strict deadlines for this process will represent a fundamental leap forward from the current system, which requires applicants to juggle each agency’s timeline separately and can sometimes delay a project by years," said Americans for a Clean Energy Grid executive director Christina Hayes in a statement on the CITAP proposal published in 2023. The public... |