FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Takes Action to Deliver More Projects More Quickly, Accelerates Federal Permitting

President Biden has been clear that the government can and must deliver more projects, more quickly. Through his Investing in America Agenda, he is delivering on that promise by accelerating project reviews while protecting communities and our environment.

To date, the Biden-Harris Administration has deployed more than $560 billion in federal investments for over 68,000 projects across the nation, and the President has taken action to accelerate these projects by devoting long overdue resources to permitting and environmental reviews.

The Biden-Harris Administration has taken historic steps to accelerate and improve the federal permitting process so that Americans across the country can benefit from the promise of the Investing in America agenda – including lowering energy costs for families and creating hundreds of thousands of good-paying and union jobs. The Administration has taken a three-prong approach. First, investing $1 billion through the Inflation Reduction Act funds to hire experts and invest in new technologies to expedite reviews. Second, passing the first reforms to modernize the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for the first time in 50 years and finalizing the Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule to accelerate the federal environmental review process. And third, using executive authorities, wherever possible, to improve permitting and environmental review processes.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing two new actions that will help build more projects, more quickly.

• The Bureau of Land Management is announcing a roadmap to support expanded solar energy production by making renewable energy siting and permitting on America’s public lands more efficient. This action will help expedite reviews of solar projects by steering them to areas with high solar potential and low wildlife and land conflicts, and ease burdens on solar developers. The Bureau of Land Management will make over 31 million acres of public lands across eleven western states available for solar development, helping to deliver clean power to millions of homes.

• The Environmental Protection Agency is announcing the conditional approval of a new rule which will allow for new offsets to create clean air credits in Maricopa County. Companies with vehicle fleets can now generate credits by replacing or retrofitting diesel-burning vehicles with electric vehicles. Manufacturers or other new emitters can then purchase those credits to balance out their future emissions. This will allow the county, which is now a center of semiconductor manufacturing in the U.S., to continue to build semiconductor fabs essential to our nation’s future and ensure that residents continue to have clean air.

Delivering Results

The Administration’s actions to reform federal permitting have already delivered real results. New data from the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) and federal agencies demonstrates that the Biden-Harris Administration is delivering more projects, more quickly while being responsible stewards of the environment and protecting communities.

The Biden-Harris Administration has cut 6 months off the median time it takes for agencies to complete environmental impact statements, the most comprehensive form of environmental review, representing 16% in time savings compared to the previous Administration and we are continuing to make more improvements.

Data indicates that there are similar results across a number of key sectors:

• Clean Energy & Transmission: The Department of Energy has cut environmental review timelines by half for environmental impact statements compared to the prior Administration. In addition, DOE has completed 15% more environmental reviews compared to the previous Administration.  In addition, the Department of Energy has started implementing the Coordinated Interagency Authorization and Permits (CITAP) program which is expected to cut review times in half for transmission projects.
• Transportation: The Department of Transportation (DOT) has cut the average time it takes to complete an environmental assessment by more than one third. DOT has also completed 20% more reviews compared to the prior Administration for projects requiring environmental assessments or environmental impact statements.
• Offshore wind: Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has completed environmental reviews for the nation’s first 10 commercial-scale offshore wind projects; before President Biden took office there were zero complete. Because of the Administration’s progress on permitting the nation’s first offshore wind projects and leasing new areas, the total U.S. offshore wind project pipeline now exceeds 80 gigawatts, enough to power more than 26 million homes if fully developed.
• Onshore renewable energy: Under the Biden-Harris Administration, the Department of the Interior has permitted more than twice as many clean energy projects on public lands than it did under the prior Administration. Together, these projects are expected to help power more than 12 million homes across the country.
• Broadband: Across the federal government, agencies are processing more than twice as many permits for high-speed internet projects on federal lands and property as they did under the prior Administration. NTIA has established and adopted a total of 36 new categorical exclusions to streamline processes, including for historic preservation and threatened and endangered species compliance for broadband.

Additionally, for projects with minimal environmental impacts, the Biden-Harris Administration has expanded use of the fastest form of environmental review – categorical exclusions. Since the start of the Administration, over 15 federal agencies have developed, expanded, or adopted 125 categorical exclusions for projects with insignificant environmental impact in key sectors such as EV charging, broadband, semiconductor manufacturing, clean energy, and transmission. This includes new categorical exclusions adopted using new permitting efficiencies passed by Congress in the Fiscal Responsibility Act.  

Federal agencies are using categorical exclusions to review the vast majority of project decisions, including 99% of federal highway decisions. This is an increase from the last time similar data was analyzed by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which found that just 96% of Federal Highway Administration projects were processed by categorical exclusions. Other agencies are also utilizing categorical exclusions for the vast majority of projects including 99% of Department of Energy decisions, and 98% of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) projects decisions.

New Executive Actions to Accelerate Permitting

The Biden-Harris Administration has taken a number of steps in recent weeks to improve federal permitting processes to help advance projects critical to the President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda.

Streamlining Historic Preservation Reviews: Earlier this month, the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP) proposed a Program Comment to accelerate historic preservation reviews for millions of clean energy, transportation, housing, and building projects over the next two decades. This action builds on steps that ACHP announced earlier this year to accelerate historic preservation reviews for broadband projects.

Accelerating Transmission Projects: The Biden-Harris Administration has started to implement the new Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits (CITAP) program which will help accelerate permitting for transmission projects to bring reviews down to a two-year timeline – twice as fast as the historical average of four years. A recent study of 33 projects found that had CITAP been in place from 2010 through 2020, it could have saved the equivalent of approximately 66 years in federal permitting time. The Department of Energy (DOE) recently opened the portal for transmission developers and project sponsors to apply for the CITAP program. In addition, the Department of Energy recently announced $371 million for 20 projects across 16 states to accelerate the siting and permitting of high-voltage interstate transmission projects and support community infrastructure projects.

Expanding Categorial Exclusions: In recent weeks, the U.S. Forest Service adopted 10 categorical exclusions that will accelerate its review of broadband projects. Data from the U.S. Forest Service indicates that these categorical exclusions will help streamline reviews for 100 broadband projects by 2027, thereby saving over $24 million in staff time per year and lead to a total reduction of over 20 years in processing time. In April the Bureau of Land Management adopted categorical exclusions to accelerate review of geothermal projects. And, earlier this month, the Department of Transportation announced a new categorical exclusion to help expedite reviews of projects dedicated to fixing older, leak-prone natural gas pipelines.

Modernizing NEPA Technology: Last month CEQ released new recommendations for using technology to modernize environmental reviews. In a new report to Congress CEQ evaluates permitting processes, include an analysis of 16 different agency technology tools and initiatives being advanced to improve the environmental review and permitting process.

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