Renewable Energy? Where’s Your Permit?

One idea is to codify in law President Trump’s One Federal Decision policy, which among other things sought to establish a two-year time limit for permit decisions. It’s a good policy (which I helped implement), but even before Mr. Biden rescinded it, recalcitrant agencies had found a loophole. They’d delay acceptance of the initial permit application, stopping the clock before it could start.

Moreover, the Trump reforms were marginal improvements to a flawed system that only Congress can fix. Because courts routinely vacate permits over minor omissions in an environmental-impact statement, agencies spend years and millions of dollars trying to study every possible alternative and impact. The system gives inordinate influence to small pockets of local opposition by allowing them to sue over trivial omissions and makes it nearly impossible to prioritize projects of national importance.

That includes Mr. Biden’s promise of clean electricity by 2035, which would require a staggering amount of permitting for new infrastructure: scores of nuclear plants, hundreds or even thousands of utility-scale solar plants, tens of thousands of windmills, hundreds of thousands of transmission-line-miles, according to estimates by industry experts such as the Electric Power Research Institute.

Mr. Biden will be lucky to get a small fraction of that permitted. Even with the Inflation Reduction Act’s addition of nearly $1 billion to hire more permitting staff, agencies will be overwhelmed by the tsunami of new permit applications headed their way. Congress needs to enact sweeping reforms:

• Make the timing predictable. Agency officials drag their feet every step of the way, leaving developers in limbo and driving up projects’ costs. If developers had more control over project timetables, it’d save a lot of capital and time. Instead of allowing only officials to assemble environmental documents, developers should be allowed to prepare the materials for agency certification. If agencies take too long issuing a permit or denial, developers should be given provisional permits to start construction subject to monitoring and mitigation.

• Create a unified process. Every major infrastructure project requires permits from a half dozen federal agencies all using different, uncoordinated processes. There should be a uniform, centralized process that gives priority to projects of national importance.

• Reduce litigation risk. Important projects are held up by lawsuits over minor omissions in environmental studies. Tightening the statute of limitations isn’t enough. Agencies should be held to a substantial-compliance standard, so that if reports are mostly right, a project can still go forward. Congress should tighten the rules on standing so that activists can’t hold up safe infrastructure over minor issues.

If the climate crisis really is “code red for humanity” as Mr. Biden claims, Congress needs to take permitting reform seriously. Otherwise, the U.S. won’t meet his clean-energy goals. Federal red tape is depriving American communities of the modern infrastructure they need and deserve. Congress should stop tinkering at the margins and fix this problem.

Mr. Loyola teaches environmental law at Florida International University and is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. He was associate director for regulatory reform at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, 2017-2019.