Bipartisan energy permitting bill could bring solar power where it’s needed most

Permitting and transmission for utility solar projects has been a challenge for the industry that has only intensified as installations get larger in size. But a new bipartisan bill in its early stages in the Senate is giving large-scale solar developers hope for a less-congested future.

The Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPRA), introduced by Sens. Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY), aims to remove the roadblocks to efficient permitting and transmission of all types of energy projects, including renewables.

Solar developers and other industry leaders have been pushing for changes like these in the past few years, most recently with almost 200 companies, including AES and EDF Renewables, sending a letter to Congress asking them to focus on this issue.

“Building new transmission in this country takes many years, like 15 years or longer to do all of the NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) review, working through communities, etc. What we have currently is an electrical grid that is, some say, archaic, and is in need of huge upgrades,” said Amanda Smith, VP of external affairs for AES.

In its current form, the EPRA would expedite judicial review processes by shortening or adding deadlines, streamline and increase deployment of renewable energy on federal lands, and help move electricity between regions by giving states more power over transmission planning.

“There are two main things that we need: We need to be able to build our own generation projects. We also need transmission built to connect our projects to load,” said Virinder Singh, VP of regulatory and legislative affairs at developer EDF Renewables. “We’ve been most focused on the federal lands piece. That’s a hugely important issue for the Western U.S., for California and all the states that want to maintain reliability and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The EPRA doubles the goal of renewable energy deployment on federal lands from 25 to 50 GW (but without a deadline) and adds energy storage to the goal. It also streamlines environmental reviews for low-disturbance renewable energy projects.

Singh said there’s more work to be done on the federal lands portion to align with the industry’s needs, but that the transmission portion is favorable as written. The bill encourages interregional collaboration and establishes cost allocation plans for who pays for transmission buildout — regional transmission organizations, specific states or utilities.

“There’s always a ton of intractable haggling amongst all those jurisdictions about who covers what, such that things don’t get built because there’s no clear path on how the costs are going to be recovered,” Singh said. “That needs to be resolved. You can imagine you’re trying to build an interstate highway system that’s also connected to state-specific farm-to-market roads. Everybody benefits from all those things across states, but people are haggling over the exact cost allocation of that, and therefore nothing gets built.”

The EPRA requires neighboring transmission planning regions to jointly create transmission construction plans. It also defines the ways costs should be allocated based on factors like improved reliability, reduced congestion and enhanced energy independence.

These changes to transmission planning could increase the ability to move clean power from areas with high solar capacity but low demand to places with less capacity and high demand.

“The more transmission you have, the more capability to move electrons from one place to another and pull in different generation sources, the more resilient and reliable your grid is,” said Jeremy Horan, VP of government affairs at the nonprofit American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). “Everything from keeping your food cold 24/7, to keeping hospitals running, to keeping military bases online — all of that stuff we need to keep those electrons flowing, and transmission, particularly interregional transmission, is going to be just critical.”

The EPRA streamlines the review process for determining where transmission is needed and sets deadlines to handle judicial reviews of energy projects, a part of the process that often adds years to projects.

“Setting hard timelines is a theme throughout the bill, whether it’s transmission or renewable energy on federal lands or even fossil infrastructure,” Singh said.

The EPRA is, of course, not exclusive to renewable energy — it’s a bipartisan bill, after all. It also aims to make it easier to build out fossil fuel and mining operations on public lands. Although groups like the Center for Biological Diversity have come out against the bill because of these provisions, renewable energy policy experts say they’re a necessary evil to passing a transmission bill in the current political climate.

“The political realities are not convenient for a single-resource permitting bill — I think the same goes for fossil too. You’re not going to get a fossil-only permitting bill,” Singh said.

The bill is still in its very early stages. It was passed out of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in July and has since stalled, likely until after the election. But Singh believes the lame-duck session could be helpful for movement.

“If you see changes in party control of the two different houses, that actually might spur interest in getting something done. So the party losing power, let’s say in the House, might want to put its stamp on a federal statute before it cedes that power. Similarly on the Senate side,” he said.

Time will tell if this will be the bill to make the permitting and transmission changes required to meet the demand for renewable energy across the country.

“It’s a common thing, particularly on federal legislative efforts, where there’s a lot of work done on something, and you don’t know if it’s going to happen or not, but if it’s going to happen, it might happen really quickly,” Singh said. “You better have everything lined up. You have to do the pre-work to take advantage of the right opportunity politically.”

Even if it doesn’t pass, it’s the start of an important next step for the solar + storage industry on Capitol Hill.

“Will this impact AES’s business, or anybody’s business, in the next two years? If it were passed today, probably not. But it’s setting the right trajectory, the right policy for reforming the system that we all rely on for the energy transition,” Smith said.