State Energy Infrastructure Permitting and Siting Series: Conclusion
In this series, we analyzed how state and local permitting and siting policies affect the bulk power industry and examined the array of technologies with demonstrated commercial expansion interest.
Some key findings from our research:
It is becoming more difficult to navigate the state and local permitting environment for wind turbines. The number of new ordinances per year increased sixteen-fold from 2003 to 2023, and the average setback requirement of ordinances increased by 304 percent over the same period. Counties with more potential for wind energy are also more likely to have ordinances restricting deployment, which are often more restrictive than those in counties with less wind energy potential.
Wind power will likely be more difficult to permit at the state and local levels in future years due to fewer available sites. However, some ordinances can be circumvented with shorter wind turbines and quieter blades, as they are based primarily on sound and height.
While solar power is also experiencing a large increase in the volume of new county-level ordinances restricting deployment, the level of restrictiveness is significantly less than for wind power. More concerning is that some counties are adopting ordinances that govern the size of installations, which may make it harder to deploy solar power in its optimal configuration (e.g., utility-scale or community solar).
Although solar power permitting is becoming more challenging at the state and local levels, it faces much less difficulty than wind.
Despite increased transmission spending, transmission is becoming more difficult to permit at the state level. Heightened transmission congestion and requested interconnection of new energy resources ought to be stimulating faster transmission construction; however, this is not occurring. At the federal level, processes meant to expedite the permitting of transmission—especially interstate transmission—encounters undue difficulty in receiving state-level permits for new construction.
One potential reason is that, similar to pipelines, stakeholders affected by new infrastructure construction are more likely to resist development if it primarily benefits parties outside their state.
Ironically, nuclear power is the only industry with a trend of less state permitting restriction. Most state and local policy governing nuclear energy permitting has focused on moratoria, but while 12 states currently have such laws, six have modified or repealed nuclear moratoria to make it easier to permit nuclear power.
Aside from moratoria, states can influence nuclear power by issuing Clean Water Act permits. Most challenges to future nuclear energy deployment are likely to be focused on the federal level; however, given historic nuclear power siting considerations and contemporary trends in infrastructure restrictions increasing as deployment increases, a future adoption of advanced nuclear reactor designs could lead to increased local ordinances (as seen with wind farm development).
States with oil and gas resources are more likely to have permitting processes that facilitate extraction. Texas’ approval timeline for drilling permits is 23 days, compared to 94-196 days at the federal level. States with oil and gas industries are also more likely to have supporting infrastructure, such as pipelines, and have been adding capacity to those pipelines even in recent years.
By contrast, key states with high gas consumption, such as California, New York, and Massachusetts, have had no new pipeline growth in recent years. This is likely due to the capacity of states to reject the permits of pipelines, even those permitted through federal authorities like the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. This form of permit rejection often comes through the issuance of CWA permits, which are the purview of states. Given the political control over such permits, it is fair to assume that states with a local political opposition to oil and gas pipelines will effectively resist their deployment, even in circumstances where expansion is expected to improve environmental outcomes and lower energy costs.
As a knock-on effect, difficulty in state permitting of gas infrastructure has increased reliance on oil-fired generation. The exceptional permitting barriers to oil and gas generation, combined with permitting barriers for alternative technologies, leave the Northeast poorly positioned to handle legacy plant retirements and new demand growth.
Similarly, nascent carbon capture technologies are likely to encounter substantial permitting issues owing to the lack of state authority in issuing permits for sequestration wells, as well as the inadequacy of state-level permitting regimes for carbon dioxide pipelines, of which most have recently had construction permits rejected.
Geothermal resources contend with the challenges of coordinating with state offices to comply with federal law. For example, if endangered species inhabit the affected permitted area, permit issuance takes an average of 69 days longer (177 days longer if the endangered species is a migratory bird). Further, if Native American tribes are affected, permitting takes an average of 81 days longer.
The replication of official function in issuing permits at the state level is a key reason for delay, with California in particular requiring geothermal energy permits to be approved by 11 state and local agencies in addition to any federal coordination required. If permitting processes are not simplified or streamlined, geothermal energy deployment is likely to be inhibited.
Overall Conclusion
In recent years, a focus on the federal level has dominated the debates on permitting reform. This makes sense, because major and more visible projects typically require federal permits. But state and local permitting presents a larger barrier to all resource classes examined except nuclear.
Federal reforms have substantial potential to address barriers in state permitting for linear, interstate infrastructure like transmission and pipelines. But options for federal policy to improve state and local permitting of single-site facilities like power plants is limited. One revelatory insight with respect to nuclear energy and oil and gas is that local sentiment toward energy resources ties tightly to the perception of local benefit (e.g., jobs, economic growth). Renewable resources, transmission lines, and pipelines require less labor and may have a harder time demonstrating their appeal to local populations. This suggests that federal action to improve the tools and data to demonstrate local project benefits may be impactful.
Overall, state and local permitting requirements related to energy infrastructure are getting more restrictive. These mounting barriers to new entry carry growing, adverse economic, reliability, and emissions implications. This does not reconcile favorably with growing power demand trends, and it presents acute reliability problems in regions like the Northeast, where all economical resource classes are difficult to permit. Given the predominance of renewables and transmission expansion, permitting restrictions in the Great Plains and the Midwest are particularly impactful. In this context, policy should focus on easing undue barriers to deployment, as policies overly focused on subsidies are likely to be less impactful.