Lynda Marin, CCL
When the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022, it provided $391 billion nationwide to support clean energy and address climate change, including $8.8 billion designated for the Home Efficiency Rebates (HOMES) Program and Home Electrification and Appliance Rebate (HEEHRA) Program.
Understandably, those of us paying attention began to question how various communities and households would be able to access the rebates and subsidies that the legislation promised us. Maybe some of us even wondered if it was possible to deliver all the electrification that was being proposed, and that was a reasonable question. In the last year, that question has become central to the promise of the Inflation Reduction Act because a structural bottleneck threatens to undermine the effectiveness of the clean energy revolution envisioned by the IRA. Typically, a permit to build new or enhanced energy transmission lines particularly across state lines can take anywhere from 3-8 years!
Recently many members of Congress, energy agencies and organizations, think tanks, and now even some of the general public have been recognizing the complexity and slow pace of our energy permitting processes and the urgency of streamlining them in order to provide enough electricity infrastructure throughout the U.S. to take advantage of the funding that the IRA designates for it. Some good news is that the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus identified permitting reform as the #1 legislative priority. 80-90% of energy projects waiting for permits are for renewable energy, so Citizens’ Climate Lobby is pushing hard for bipartisan legislation on this front, and from the looks of early bills that are being proposed, there’s a chance we’ll see some decent permitting reform legislation before election season swings into high gear.
For background on one of the key energy modeling engineers who advised legislators in real time as they developed the IRA and is now speaking broadly about permitting reform, see https://spectrum.ieee.org/jesse-jenkins How Jesse Jenkins advised the IRA.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/04/opinion/nepa-permitting-reform.html