The Obama administration and Congress are determined to ratchet up the production of green energy in the United States, but that goal is being undermined by "radical environmental activism," the business community is trying to convince Washington.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce on Thursday stepped up its campaign for congressional action to streamline the production of clean-energy infrastructure by launching the Web site ProjectNoProject.com.
Too many infrastructure projects, including electric transmission lines and solar farms, the chamber says, are held up by what it refers to as "green tape": lengthy permitting processes, litigation from concerned local activists and environmental groups, and other hurdles like rezoning. In many cases, the chamber says, these challenges delay projects for so long that financing dries up and the projects are abandoned.
"If we're truly going to be a green society and begin deploying these projects, we're going to have to find a way to streamline these projects into commerce," said William Kovacs, the U.S. Chamber's vice president of environment, technology and regulatory affairs.
Within the last 18 months, around 65 projects have been substantially delayed or killed, he said.
The new Web site gives examples of delayed projects in each state, and it gives visitors a "grassroots toolkit" to promote the site. It also provides a link to a standard letter that visitors can send to Congress members to urge them to shorten the environmental permitting process and more strictly regulate litigation against green-energy projects.
The chamber is asking Congress to set a 270-day time limit for the environmental assessments that must be completed for a stimulus-funded green-energy project to move forward. The organization would also like to see some limits on litigation against these projects, such as a time limit on legal actions or limits on the number of appeals possible. Alternatively, the chamber may ask for adjustments to the litigating process, such as taking cases directly to a court of appeals.
"We're not trying to change anyone's rights," Kovacs said. "All we're saying is there has to be an end point."
The Sierra Club and other prominent groups have adamantly opposed some projects, such as San Diego Gas & Electric's proposed Sunrise Powerlink project, a 1,000-megawatt transmission line that would transfer geothermal energy from California's Imperial Valley to the San Diego area.
"The center pin at a bowling alley isn't better positioned to do more damage at once than this reckless scheme which would string a power line over eagles, waterfalls, and history," the Sierra Club said in its April newsletter (PDF).
The energy bill proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is too tolerant of this kind of opposition, said Kovacs, since it has no limits on lawsuits against energy projects.
Janet Kavinoky, the chamber's director of transportation infrastructure, said the chamber's message is catching on around Capitol Hill and already has support from some members like Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wy.) and David Vitter (R-La.).
"We have heard from members interested in finding out what projects have been stopped in their states," she said.
A fool with a plan can beat a genius with no plan--or so the saying goes, according to T. Boone Pickens, the billionaire oilman turned clean-energy advocate.
To provide a plan to boost the nation's use of clean energy, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced Monday he will introduce major legislation this week to reform electric transmission line development. Reid made the announcement at a Washington conference where he, Pickens, former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore, and others met to discuss guiding principles to reform the United States' energy policy. The forum was titled the "National Clean Energy Project: Building the New Economy."
The Obama administration has said it would like 25 percent of the nation's energy to come from renewable sources by 2025, and the billions of dollars provided in the recently signed stimulus package offer the means to get there, Reid said. His bill, he said, will provide more guidance for that funding to be used appropriately.
The deployment of renewable energy across the country has faced setbacks because of the challenges facing the construction of electric transmission lines, such as who will fund them and where to site the lines. The bill aims to give the federal government more authority over those questions.
It's a proposal that has been met with some resistance, Reid said at the conference, hosted by the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
"If this is going to succeed, we're going to have to accept that's how we've always done things," he said, citing the federal government's central role in developing railroads and a national highway system. "Everyone should get off the kick this program won't work if the government's involved in it."
The legislation will call for the president to designate renewable energy zones with significant clean-energy-generating potential. Once that occurs, the bill will call for massive planning efforts to site transmission lines around those zones--a process that the federal government will take over if it stalls.
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WASHINGTON--Now that the federal government has authorized spending billions of dollars for transmission line construction and renewable-energy efforts, it may expand its authority over how interstate transmission lines are built.
President Obama on Tuesday signed the so-called stimulus bill into law, providing what Obama's climate czar Carol Browner called on Tuesday "an amazing down payment" on smart grid technology, renewable-energy production, and other efforts to create energy efficiency.
Questions remain, however, as to whether the Energy Department and other government agencies will be able to overcome a complex regulatory maze to spend the funds quickly and appropriately, particularly for transmission lines.
"Our energy sector is very complicated," Karen Harbert, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Institute for 21st Century Energy, said at the Chamber on Tuesday. "It's become too easy for any project of any hue to get wrapped up in 'green' tape."
That "green tape" could mean granting permits, allocating costs appropriately for interstate transmission lines, or siting--the process of determining where exactly the lines will go.
Congress intends to address these problems in upcoming legislation, said Chris Miller, a senior energy adviser for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), at a smart-grid discussion at Google's Washington office on Tuesday. The legislation would expand the federal government's authority over a process that is typically led by the states.
"You will see legislation, and you will see it fairly soon," Miller said.
Reid has been working for a couple of years, he said, on ways to get renewable energies to the marketplace and will reintroduce an expanded version of a bill he introduced last session. The legislation is likely to be introduced this March or April.
If the government truly wants to meet Obama's goals for energy efficiency--such as doubling the amount of renewable energy in the next three years--the Department of Energy will have to reorganize immediately, said Andy Karsner, the Energy Department's former associate secretary for energy efficiency and renewable energy. The department's failure to distribute the loan guarantees promised in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 demonstrate the department's failures, he and other panelists at the Google event said.
The department is mired in the "organic growth of legacy policy," Karsner said, and needs to exert more authority over interstate transmission issues.
Just as decades ago Congress withheld highway construction funds from states that did not adopt 21 as the legal drinking age, the government should be able to enforce conditions on states to set up a functional, efficient electric transmission system, Karsner said.
"It's a necessity, and only the federal government can provide for that necessity," he said.
John Podesta, an Obama adviser and president of the Center for American Progress, said the administration was enthusiastic about the promise of renewable energy as it developed the stimulus package but was weighed down by "a sense of frustration that policy still needed to be developed."
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