A Department of Energy analysis found that faster permitting alone could more than double geothermal capacity by 2050.
A Department of Energy analysis found that faster permitting alone could more than double geothermal capacity by 2050.
C ongress is on the verge of fixing one of the strangest defects in federal permitting: an environmental review designed to be fast that has no time limitation.
Introduced on September 30, the Senate’s new Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act (BAAJA) would, among many other permitting changes, impose a one-year deadline on federal permitting decisions for certain energy and infrastructure projects that do not require an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.
The bill was introduced only six weeks after new research from the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) identified essentially the same flaw in federal geothermal permitting. The study found that the supposed “fast lane” under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) — categorical exclusions (CXs) — sometimes took longer than Congress ordinarily allows the more intensive environmental assessment process to take.
Congress missed on solving this problem the last time it reformed the federal permitting system. In 2023, the Fiscal Responsibility Act imposed a one-year deadline on environmental assessments and a two-year deadline on environmental impact statements. But it left CXs, which are assumed to be much faster than the other two processes, without any deadline at all.
CXs are supposed to reduce the time and burden of federal review for projects unlikely to have significant environmental effects. In fact, the Trump administration recently issued a CX-first policy intended to relieve “excessive permitting burdens” and “help decrease project delays.” Yet today, a project placed in the CX fast lane can theoretically remain there longer than a project subjected to a far more intensive review.
And that happens.
PLF examined 133 geothermal exploration projects, including 88 approved through CXs. Eighteen percent of those CXs took more than 200 days to approve, 8 percent took more than a year, and 6 percent took more than a year and 100 days.
At first glance, one might assume that projects facing the longest delays were unusually large or environmentally consequential. But the available data suggest otherwise.
The PLF study found virtually no relationship between delay and project size. Among CXs, neither the amount of land disturbed nor the number of wells drilled meaningfully predicted how long review would take. Moreover, CXs are available precisely because an agency has determined that the activity is unlikely to have significant environmental effects.
Consider Nevada’s Hinds Temperature Survey. The project proposed taking basic subsurface temperature measurements at 35 locations. A vehicle would drive a 1.5-inch-wide steel rod roughly 50 feet into the ground to measure underground heat. The rod would then be removed, allowing the hole to collapse naturally or be filled. It required no new roads and would disturb less than one square meter of ground in total — about the size of a bath towel. Yet federal approval took one year and 182 days.
That is not careful environmental review scaling with project scope and intensity. At the very least, we should question whether long reviews simply reflect greater environmental risk.
CX delays likely make energy more expensive for Americans than it otherwise would be. Every project in the PLF study was geothermal exploration — the early work needed to locate and test geothermal resources that can provide clean, around-the-clock electricity. But permitting barriers make that exploration slower and more expensive. A Department of Energy analysis found that faster permitting alone could more than double geothermal capacity by 2050. Beyond geothermal, studies have found that permitting delays constrain a wide variety of energy infrastructure, contributing to higher costs and greater price volatility for consumers.
Enter the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act, the bipartisan permitting bill now reviving hopes for faster infrastructure development and cheaper energy.
For projects involving federal permits or authorizations but no environmental assessment or impact statement, the BAAJA would require agencies to make their permitting decisions within one year. Projects that avoid the National Environmental Policy Act’s more intensive forms of review would finally get a time limit of their own.
A one-year deadline is not perfect. Small projects searching for reliable, clean energy that are unlikely to affect the environment should ideally obtain government approval in a matter of months, if that. But one year is still a dramatic improvement over the open-ended timetable that exists today.
Congress deserves credit for identifying an erroneous feature of federal permitting and proposing a fix. Now it must follow through: preserve this important provision of the bill and pass the Bipartisan American Affordability and Jobs Act.