As the United States works to decarbonize the power sector, one trend is clear: solar power will play a growing role in US electricity generation. The amount of electricity generated from solar power has grown rapidly as costs have plunged by 90 percent since 2009. Recent projections from the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) show that as much as half of new generation resources that come online through 2050 could be powered by the sun.
But while costs have dropped, other barriers to new solar generation remain. One of these impediments is the series of permits and permissions that solar projects must obtain from the federal government before facilities can be built. The federal review process for large solar projects provides a critical filter to ensure that projects won’t harm ecosystems or land with cultural importance; such a lengthy process also can slow progress toward climate change mitigation goals. Fortunately, improvements to the permitting process can be made to avoid unnecessary slowdowns.
My new study—conducted with Louisiana State University’s Valkyrie Buffa and Lindsay Rich—describes how a sample of real-world solar projects have navigated federal permitting processes, from the drawing board to actually breaking ground. Specifically, we examine the effects of the federal solar permitting process on 45 utility-scale solar projects from 2008 to 2019. Our goal was to identify what obstacles these kinds of projects face in the way of federal permitting and review processes, and how these processes could be streamlined in the future without sacrificing effectiveness.
From 45 initial projects, the paper takes a closer look at a subset of 20 utility-scale solar projects that required more substantive reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). For 11 projects that needed to provide an environmental impact statement because of NEPA guidelines, the review process alone took one to two years. The remaining nine projects required roughly six to nine months to complete an environmental assessment—which is a less rigorous process than an environmental impact statement—with a finding of “No Significant Impact.” Many of the projects required permits from several agencies, such as the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Army Corps of Engineers.
Our paper lays out the permitting processes required for solar projects on federal, state, tribal, and private lands—processes which assess both the environmental impacts and the effects of the project on culturally significant sites. Figure 1 lists the federal permitting and review requirements in place to protect water resources, federally listed plant and animal species, and cultural resources. Projects planned for federal lands also must obtain a separate approval from the federal land management agencies.
