For The U.S., There Is No Net-Zero Without Major Permitting Reform

“There are so many terrific new opportunities for clean energy deployment within the Inflation Reduction Act. If you don’t have a parallel call to modernize the way these projects are permitted, it’s hard for me to see that these projects will come online in a timely manner,” Heather Zichal, CEO, American Clean Power Association, August 2022

It’s no wonder that Joe Manchin’s permitting reform efforts failed: it never had much of chance because of our self-defeating climate advocates.

From pipelines to wind and solar farms to transmission lines, we’ve made it nearly impossible to build anything in this country.

We’ve installed a labyrinthine permit approval process that drastically stalls or outright blocks important infrastructure projects from ever getting constructed.

The average is nearly five years and $4.2 million just to complete the review process, that is before developers can even start building.

The median Environmental Impact Statement is more than 600 pages long.

The Progressive Policy Institute sums up all the hurdles the best:

“If you think a two year, million dollar, 1,000+ page environmental report simply to build new bike lanes in an already developed city seems absurd, you’re not alone,” PPI, September 2022

Indeed, the U.S. easily leads when it comes to the number of lawyers per capita, where the incredibly burdensome National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) rule blocking infrastructure development has been weaponized in the courts.

And as my Forbes colleague Ariel Cohen just pointed out, NIMBYism is a “bipartisan energy problem.”

Anyone worried about the state of the planet should be highly alarmed.

The “we can’t build anything” is a really big and urgent problem for the huge build-out in infrastructure that is now required to meet our energy and climate change goals.

President Biden has promised to drastically curtail our greenhouse gas emissions: a 50% reduction by 2030 compared to 2005 levels.

This means major changes to the country’s energy system.

More infrastructure and more mining.

Clean technologies – from wind turbines to solar panels to electric vehicles to battery storage – demand a wide range of minerals and metals.

Yet, our mining revolution continues to get blocked at every turn by, most ironically, many of the same people who are demanding an immediate shift to the energy transition itself.

To reach net-zero to fight climate change, experts agree that we now need the largest infrastructure build since the Second Industrial Revolution 150 years ago.

Including from the Biden administration, there is bi-partisan support (finally on something!).

Democrats and Republicans have been working together to see how we can change all this: How Environmental Litigation Can Block Renewable Projects.

The more “progressive” wing of the Democratic party though strongly opposed Manchin.

But maybe these Democrats were being more “unrealistic” than progressive.

Manchin would have given federal regulators new authority to issue construction permits for power lines and transmission projects deemed “necessary in the national interest.”

Utilities and investors see transmission as a highly valuable part of the business mix and energy transition, essential to any decarbonization plan.

The reality is that our windiest and sunniest regions are remote from the cities that need their electricity.

This means a huge amount of high-voltage transmission lines that are simply now taking way too long to build, increasing curtailments of our cleanest resources and blocking climate progress.

Through the end of August, Bloomberg reports that these “congestion charges” this year cost the country a staggering $100 billion, or double what has been an annual average.

Our problems for much more wind and solar power are obvious: approval to build new transmission lines currently needs to be granted state by state, parcel by parcel.

The urgency to build transmission with better permitting is apparent: a study from leading experts at Princeton University on reaching net-zero by 2050 concludes that we need as must as $2.4 trillion to expand transmission systems to handle the renewable power boom (Figure below).

Cheryl LaFleur, a former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), explains just how arduous that process is by using the example of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Interstate highway project:

• “Imagine if he didn’t have any authority to site the Interstate highways and he said….‘We’d like to have some interstate highways, why don’t all you states go out and plan them?’” Cheryl LaFleur, FERC, 2021

And as Manchin tried to explain, the energy unrealists must also realize the importance of natural gas, which has now been cleared as a “green investment” in Europe – a continent with the strictest such definitions in the world.

Critically, this “gas is integral” reality has been supported by our environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) leaders: “I’m very pleased that the Eurozone finally has said gas is green,” says Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock.

Again, we must remain realistic or we’ve got no shot at net-zero.

Extremely telling of the irreplaceability of natural gas, during the most recent heatwave in green-tinted California, gas generated a whopping 60% of the wind- and solar-fixated state’s electricity.

In other words, despite decades of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies and mandates to force renewables into the system, gas is still easily California’s main source of electricity – and performing under the most difficult of conditions when renewables did not.

I would argue that no state, ever, will spend as much money and use as many policies to try and force renewables into the system like California has for the past 20 years, and yet: gas still dominates.

This is all a matter of physics, not a “lack of investments.”

We’ve seen this also with Germany, where after hundreds of billions spent on renewables, more gas pipelines and liquefied natural gas terminals remain a top priority.

But perhaps the biggest 180 of them all? From Reuters, “Ban on gas fracking in England lifted in push for energy independence.”

Things are so bad in gas importing Europe that The Wall Street Journal just hit on how energy-intensive industries are set to leave the continent for much lower prices in the gas production powerhouse U.S.

Yes, just another way we will be utilizing more natural gas far into the future: we must prepare now for a domestic industry and manufacturing boom to support the energy transition in major growth ares like electric vehicles, energy storage, and renewable power development.

Our “gas is the future” continues to set in: Virginia Governor Glenn Glenn Youngkin has issued an energy plan that would continue investment in natural gas infrastructure and build a small modular nuclear reactor, but back away from the 100% renewable portfolio standard enacted in 2020.

And as the goal of “deep electrification” marches on – a centerpiece strategy to fight climate change – we surely need a reliable, affordable, and flexible power supply system.

Without one, the incentive for Americans to electrify will evaporate.

Just imagine the problems that we could have when we add potentially hundreds of millions of electric cars to the grid (we have 270 million oil cars to displace).

Experts have continued to warn us about these climate dangers as it relates to installing expensive and unreliable electricity.

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation concludes that states in the West that are increasing their “variable resource profiles” (i.e., electricity from wind and solar) are “raising the risk of energy shortfalls.”

Gas has proven invaluable not just to help lower emissions but also to back up these renewables.

New England, for instance, has the highest electricity prices in the country because states utilize gas as the primary resource but continue to block much-needed pipelines.

National Grid is set to increase power rates another 65% this winter starting November 1.

With electrification as a key climate change strategy, studies continue to show that our power demand is set to surge, perhaps by over 70% in the next 20-25 years.

Our solution is not a “renewables vs gas” thing; it’s a “renewables AND gas” thing.