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).

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

1. Why were the burdens so great? Were they designed to close loopholes? What were the loopholes? Did something happen that made the more complicated rules necessary? If so, what was it?

2. Are the factors still present that prompted the complicated rules?

The adage, “Don’t tear down that fence until you know why it was put up”, almost literally applies here.

[Stephen Lathrop]

As always, regulations do not kill projects. Inability to comply, or unwillingness to try, kill projects. An environmental standard which insisted that no projects ever fail to get over regulatory hurdles would be no standard at all.

And once again, an EIS is not a substantive standard. It is not possible to fail an EIS and get your project disallowed. The point of an EIS is to require sufficient data is provided to engage the political process in an informed way. If the political process then concludes without an approval, that is arguably to the good.

[Brett Bellmore]

"As always, regulations do not kill projects. Inability to comply, or unwillingness to try, kill projects."

That is a literally insane claim. You're saying that it's simply impossible to promulgate a regulation that isn't possible, or economically feasible, to comply with? Or are regulators so perfect that they never craft such regulations?

[bye]

Wind is the worst of all alternative energy sources.

And your entire thinking collapses (energy, environment, security) when Biden's hideous solar plans are seen in toto

30 x 30 project touted by Biden to keep land for the public
but then : The U.S. Bureau of Land Management designated than 31 million acres of public land in 11 states as open to utility-scale solar development. [ yes, ugly, tons of chemical sht leaching into water as in Texas ]
Then we learn how stupid Biden is
" will have more than 80% of the world's solar manufacturing capacity through 2026 and will be capable of satisfying annual global demand for much of the next decade, according to a report published on Tuesday.
The forecast by energy research firm Wood Mackenzie comes as nations like the United States and India are subsidizing their own solar production to reduce reliance on Chinese-made goods to achieve their clean energy goals."

And then the crowning abomination
Rogue communication devices found in Chinese solar power inverters
By Sarah Mcfarlane
May 14, 20251

THis is why I no longer trust you outside your field