Permitting the Future

A symposium looking at the need to permit the construction and deployment of energy infrastructure in order to meet environmental goals.

Last week, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited opinion in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County. This opinion scaled back the (largely judicially imposed) requirements for Environmental Impact Statements under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), and could dramatically reduce permitting burdens on needed infrastructure.

Also last week, the Case Western Reserve Law Review posted the papers from its "Permitting the Future" symposium issue. These papers examine the burden of permitting requirements on environmentally desirable development. Energy infrastructure is a major focus of the symposium, as it is of the larger debate over permitting, but some papers examine the effect on other issues, such as federal land management and urban revitalization.

The volume includes:

• Introduction - Permitting the Future by Jonathan H. Adler (PDF)
• Infrastructure for the Energy Transition by Timothy Fitzgerald (PDF)
• Permitting the Energy Transition by James W. Coleman (PDF)
• The New NEPA? – A Case Study in Congressional Frustration by Victor Flatt (PDF)
• Overcoming Unreasonably Burdensome Restrictions on the Use of Farmland for Solar Generation  by Matthew Eisenson (PDF)
• If We Fail to Solve Global Climate Change, Blame the Nuclear Regulatory Commission by Jeremy Kidd (PDF)
• The National Environmental Policy Act and Climate Change Adaptation Within Federal Natural Resource Management AgenciesS by Sara Sutherland (PDF)
• Plain-Bagel Streamlining? Notes from the California Housing Wars by Christopher S. Elmendorf and Clayton Nall (PDF)
• Regulating Entities, Not Activities: Reforming the Environmental Permit Raj by Andrew P. Morriss and Roger E. Meiners (PDF)

All of the papers are available online in their printed form.

My own contribution, beyond providing an introduction and overview, walks through the permitting gauntlet faced by the Lake Erie Wind Project, a gauntlet that ultimately killed the project. I believe it is a useful case study of how even well-intentioned permitting requirements and regulatory processes can make it very difficult for alternative energy sources to be developed and deployed (and can make it all-too-easy for a small set of determined opponents to kill a potentially valuable project).

The papers were prepared for a workshop co-sponsored by the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law (where I have spend the  past six years as the founding Director) and the Property and Environment Research Center (where I am a Senior Fellow).