Energy Literacy: 3 + 6 things you need to know about permitting

Editorial note: E/lectrify will publish on Tuesday next week — a report from veteran environmental reporter Elizabeth McGowan — and will then be off for the week before the new year. I will be spending that time doing some deep thinking about the future of the newsletter.

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So, here are the first three things you need to know about energy permitting:

A case in point here are the wind turbines in the San Gorgonio Pass outside of Palm Springs, Calif., pictured above (from Konrad Fiedler/Bloomberg News). When the first 130 turbines went up in the pass in 1983, the outcry from local residents was loud and fierce. True, the early turbines were small, lattice-work structures — a bit rickety looking and not always pleasing to the eye. Some wanted them painted to blend in with the desert landscape.

But the wind funneling through the pass generated a lot of power, and over time, taller, more graceful turbines were installed, producing even more power and becoming “iconic” and a major attraction for the region. Turbine repair and maintenance provides well-paid local jobs, and visitors can book a windmill tour, either self-guided or by golf cart.

In other words, in an ideal world, energy permitting should encompass a careful consideration of project impacts and how to balance a wide range of sometimes conflicting interests. It should also be fact- and science-driven and as free from political, economic or social bias as possible. 

Of course, our world is far from ideal, which means permitting has become intensely political and, under the Trump administration, far from fact- and science-driven. Rather, it is being used to advance Trump’s fossil-fueled agenda for U.S. “energy dominance” and winning the artificial intelligence race with China.

Renewable energy permitting on federal land has been slowed to a virtual crawl, with projects requiring dozens of sign-offs from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. As I was working on this piece, news broke that the Department of the Interior had announced its first approval of a previously approved solar project — the 700 MW Libra solar and storage project in Nevada – it had put on hold. 

The brief DOI announcement noted only that certain “realignments” were made in the project plan. 

Meanwhile, the administration, grid operators and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are pushing various reforms aimed at streamlining and fast-tracking project permitting — some with  little concern for the environment or public input. (More on this later.)

Now why you should care about any of this is, first, it will affect your electric bill. The U.S. is going to build major amounts of new electric power generation and power lines in the next few years – a good chunk of which consumers could pay for via rate increases. 

Solar, wind and storage are the cheapest forms of generation we can get online within that time frame; we have hundreds of gigawatts sitting in project pipelines across the county, and yes, they are reliable. 

But a new analysis from the Cleanview newsletter shows that 1,891 energy projects totaling 266 GW of power were cancelled in 2025; that is, we cancelled more than the 166 GW of new electricity that a recent report says the country may need by 2030. 

Most of the projects cancelled were renewables, in many cases due to local and state permitting laws. For example, Cleanview notes that both Ohio and Indiana are courting data centers that will require new power, while blocking renewable energy projects that could provide that electricity fast and cheap.

Another reason for project cancellations is lack of transmission lines — the big wires on pylons that move large amounts of power across long distances — which again is partly due to permitting challenges and local opposition. It can now take 10 years or more to get a new transmission line permitted. 

The 500-mile SunZia line, being built to bring wind energy from New Mexico to Arizona and points west, took a record 17 years to permit.

Which brings me to a few words on the not-in-my-backyard folks – the NIMBYs. I’m a green geek, so I actually like seeing solar panels on roofs in my neighborhood and electric power lines running across open country, but I know not everyone feels the same, and the views on all sides can be highly emotional.

That said, and acknowledging how sensitive this topic is, not liking the way a project looks is not, in and of itself, a valid reason for trying to get it canceled or cherry-picking scientific or medical data to come up with unlikely environmental, economic or health impacts. 

A recent Canary Media article documented how groups funded by the fossil fuel industry successfully have shut down offshore wind development in the U.S., using blatant misinformation linking it to whale deaths and loss of property values and local tourism.

The emotional appeal of such misinformation can make it hard to counter, even with facts — such as, rooftop solar that cuts homeowner electric bills is likely to increase a property’s value. Similarly, combining solar and agriculture — agrivoltaics — can ensure that such projects do not take valuable farmland out of production.

Environmental reviews that carefully consider project impacts on water use, air quality, native wildlife and plants, tribal sites and greenhouse gas emissions should continue to be a critical part of permitting, and must ensure ample opportunities for input from local communities. 

Thoughtful community input can and should make projects better, but as previously noted, practical mitigation efforts and trade-offs will be essential. 

The U.S. is way behind Europe and China in offshore wind development. As occurred in Palm Springs, smart coastal communities could turn offshore projects into their own iconic attractions that boost local tourism. 

The other reason permitting is important is that it affects our access to the clean, affordable and reliable electric power that is vital to our daily lives, well-being, national security and economy.

The projects we permit today and in the next few years will shape the U.S. electric power system for decades to come. The fossil fuel industry’s rebranding efforts notwithstanding, natural gas is not a “clean” or “bridge” fuel. Once a fossil-fueled power plant is built, it will remain in operation for 20 or 30 years, or longer — as will the pipelines and other GHG-producing infrastructure that come with it.

Climate change doesn’t care who’s in the White House or whether it’s fashionable to talk about it. We as a nation have hard questions to ask about who we want making the rules — and the decisions — about what kinds of power we put online and what those rules should be. 

Permitting obstacles to renewables are, if anything, growing more pervasive at all levels across the country. 

Utilities often are the first gatekeepers, raising obstacles for local homeowners, schools and businesses installing rooftop solar. In Washington, D.C., Pepco, a corporate or investor-owned utility, can put a hold on local solar installations until a home- or business owner pays for upgrades to power lines, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars (which I wrote about here and here).

Dominion Energy, Virginia’s largest corporate utility, requires even more expensive and possibly unnecessary system upgrades for any solar installation greater than 250 kW. A plan to put solar panels on 87 schools in Fairfax County had to be cut back to 34 installations, to get the projects online without triggering the extra costs.

Permitting obstacles at the local level can be even more restrictive and intense. According to a recent report from the Sabin Center for Environmental Law at Columbia University, by the end of 2024, “459 counties and municipalities across 44 states had adopted severe local restrictions” on renewables — a 16% increase over the previous year.

The most common restrictions are local moratoria on solar or wind development, size limits or requirements that renewable projects be set back certain distances from property lines or other buildings

For example, Carroll County, Maryland limits the size of any ground-mounted solar in residential or commercial areas to 480 square feet; height is limited to 15 feet, and these “facilities must include a 12-foot-tall vegetative buffer along all property lines,” the report says.

Michigan leads the country with 62 county and municipal restrictions, although a 2023 state law pre-empts solar projects over 50 MW and wind projects over 100 MW from any local limits that are stricter than state regulations. 

Other states have similar laws with different thresholds. In Maryland, for example, solar projects over 2 MW and wind projects over 70 MW are exempt. 

Still, the impact of local opposition — often driven by NIMBY-type individuals or groups — cannot be underestimated. A few people speaking out at a local or state public hearing or commission meeting can quickly put a project on hold or trigger a moratorium. 

And, as the Canary Media article cautioned, such local groups are often supported by a national network of conservative think tanks funded by fossil fuel interests.

But the big noise right now is all about federal permitting and the National Environmental Policy Act, aka NEPA, which requires federal agencies to study and report on the environmental impacts of any “major action” — such as approving large energy projects on federal land. 

(A history of the law and the visionary behind it — Sen. Henry M. “Scoop” Jackson (D-Wash.) — can be found here.)  

The law has been vilified in recent years as a primary cause of permitting delays and bottlenecks, and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have debated and negotiated over how to update it to accelerate environmental reviews and permitting, ideally without cutting corners.

Republicans in Congress  — and a range of corporate interests — began whittling away at NEPA even before President Trump returned to the White House in January and declared war on renewables. 

The Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 — the debt ceiling deal — limited environmental reviews to two years and 300 pages. 

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act further upended NEPA with a series of give-aways to the natural gas industry, such as automatic approvals for natural gas pipelines if a federal agency does not complete an environmental review or other permits in one year. Legal challenges to such approvals were limited to the developer or anyone “who has suffered, or likely and imminently will suffer, direct and irreparable economic harm from the approval.” (Read my take-down here.)

The Trump administration has further sweetened the pot for the fossil fuel and nuclear industries by doing its utmost to reduce or eliminate public input on environmental reviews. As outlined in a detailed analysis from the Environmental Law Institute, the administration has revoked or rolled back any rules requiring public notice, review drafts and public comment opportunities as part of the environmental review process. 

In a worst-case scenario, the feds could approve new fossil fuel drilling or a natural gas pipeline on public land near you or in a favorite national park without anyone knowing about it or being able to officially register their opposition. 

The latest assault on NEPA is the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development, or SPEED, Act, which would complete the gutting of the law. Passed by the House of Representatives on Dec. 18, the bill’s language punches enough holes in the environmental review process to accommodate several 18-wheelers. 

The Sierra Club has a comprehensive rundown here, but I will point out a few of the provisions that stopped me cold. 

The scope of environmental reviews are narrowed to “only those effects that share a reasonably close causal relationship to, and are proximately caused by, the immediate project or action.” Translation: Things like a project’s cumulative or long-term impacts — such as its GHG emissions — or the effects of multiple projects across a region would not be considered.

The Republicans don’t want anyone getting confused with facts, so once an application for a project is in, environmental reviews would not need to include any “new scientific or technical research.” unless it is considered essential and won’t take too long or cost too much. Exactly who will decide what is essential or set limits on time or cost is unclear. 

Legal challenges to a final decision are limited to individuals or groups who previously filed “substantive and unique” and “sufficiently detailed” comments on a project and who “[have] suffered or imminently will suffer direct harm” as a result of the decision. But with opportunities for public input carefully eliminated, no comments — substantive, unique or sufficiently detailed — may be on the record, effectively closing off litigation.

Even the NIMBYs would have a hard time with that one. 

Without a doubt, we need to streamline and accelerate permitting of energy projects, including solar, wind and storage, but gutting NEPA is not the answer. In its letter opposing the SPEED Act, the Sierra Club argues that “the persistent myth that NEPA reviews are the primary cause of permitting delay is demonstrably false.”

Delays are caused by external factors — lack of funding or project design changes — or a lack of staff and funding to ensure federal agencies can complete reviews in a timely fashion, the letter says.

At this point, taking the politics out of permitting is simply not possible — the urgent need for new generation and transmission to power AI is overriding pretty much every other consideration. We have to change that narrative and again ask, who do we trust to make the rules and decisions about the future of our energy system?