No Time to Read 36 Resources on State Permitting Reform? We Built an Easy-to-Use Tool That Will Do It for You.

Despite record demand for electricity in the United States, bringing new clean energy projects onto the grid takes a long time, typically from 4 to 6 years, with project delays most often occurring during complex siting and permitting processes. Over the past few years, state and federal policymakers have raced to address this bottleneck.

Solving this issue could potentially unlock and secure large-scale, long-term reliable energy by removing red tape and streamlining processes so that projects get built faster. And it would be a much-needed bipartisan win that could lower costs for families and small businesses.

However, in the rush to address this persistent challenge, policy analysts have produced an onslaught of new research reports, recommendations, and policy ideas. Our team collected nearly 40 resources — totaling over 1,000 pages of recommendations all published since 2023 — and got to reading.

The State Permitting Power Tool

Based on our meta-analysis of the existing literature, we created the State Permitting Power Tool to help policymakers and companies more easily navigate the complex permitting and siting landscape.

While permitting reform is often discussed as a single policy goal, our analysis shows that, in practice, it is a bundle of distinct challenges and reform strategies, operating at different levels of government and reflecting different regulatory philosophies, ranging from reforms that prioritize streamlining existing policies to policies that pursue deliberate deregulation.

Our new State Permitting Power Tool has two main features. First, it helps states think more concretely about exactly what permitting challenges they are actually trying to solve. For example, are the primary challenges faced in the state related to extended litigation challenges or are they more closely tied to confusion about which government agency is responsible for permitting?

Second, the tool then identifies policy reforms outlined in the existing literature that might be responsive to the specific challenge that the state is facing. This allows states to more easily digest the wide range of options that have been suggested.

The below screenshots show the tool in action. Here, the user has identified Complexity and Lack of Clarity as their overarching issue, and Fragmented Governance & Authority as the type of challenge they would like to focus on. Finally, they have narrowed in on “varying jurisdictional authority without predictable boundaries and guardrails” as their specific barrier to explore.

Once the user has selected their challenge, they can display a range of related reforms that might address this specific barrier. Each reform can be expanded for more info, example applications, and underlying sources.

The list of reforms available for each permitting challenge demonstrates that there are often a variety of approaches to address permitting barriers. For each individual challenge, the Permitting Power Tool generates a suite of potential solutions, which can be explored depending on an individual state’s political philosophy, preferences, or available resources.

For example, limited staff capacity in local permitting offices may cause standards for clean energy projects to be applied inconsistently across a state. This creates an increasingly complex and unclear permitting landscape for developers. The Permitting Power Tool shows that this challenge can be addressed in radically different ways — by further empowering local permitting offices, or by centralizing permitting power through a state-led pathway. By demonstrating the availability of different reform actions, the tool helps decision makers draw conclusions that not only address their challenges but create autonomy in the process.

Here are a few of our high-level takeaways from this analysis (described in more detail below).

1. We need to realize that that there is no single solution for “permitting reform,” and more quickly narrow in on specifics.
2. Despite individual contexts, states still face some common challenges when it comes to permitting. Thankfully, there are common reforms and solutions to match.
3. Reform types can fall across a wide range of philosophical approaches.
4. There is no quick fix; but identifying “low-hanging fruit” while working on longer-term reform is a great place to start.

We hope this new resource can help states quickly understand the challenges they are facing and provide a jumping off point to explore solutions that are suited to their needs.

The underlying analysis spans a wide range of states and encompasses a large body of underlying sources— including official state guidance documents, legislation, policy briefs, legal analyses, advocacy materials, and research reports. We also considered implementation tools and portals, such as the Virginia Permit Transparency Portal and Massachusetts’ Business Front Door, both of which provide real-time permitting information. Together, this cross-section of literature and resources reflects the rapidly evolving policy landscape surrounding permitting reform in the United States.

Our team reviewed this literature to extract discrete lists of (1) novel permitting challenges relevant to states and (2) novel state-level policy recommendations. We then analyzed the resulting data to identify key findings and trends. For example, we found that many of the proposed permitting reforms could be categorized into one of three reform types: reforms that simply streamline existing processes; those that fix the permitting system by making substantive changes, and reforms that aim to deregulate the permitting space all-together.

Types of analysis performed

We analyzed different aspects of both the permitting challenges and proposed reforms identified in the literature:

Permitting Challenges:

• Impact on industry experience: We broke apart the full landscape of permitting challenges based on the most likely impact on industry. For example, some issues result in the permitting process being unnecessarily complex (such as unclear or overlapping decision-making authority across state and local entities) while others might impose financial burdens on industry.
• Challenge categories: We identified 11 high-level categories that encompass the full range of permitting challenges presented in the reviewed literature.  
• Relevant reforms: For each permitting challenge, we identified a shortlist of reforms that could be relevant to addressing that challenge and then sorted these reforms by relevance. These suggestions reflect value judgments and are not comprehensive, but they offer a valuable jumping off point for users.

Permitting Reforms:

• Reform types: Identifies whether the reform primarily seeks to fix the permitting policy landscape, streamline existing processes, or deregulate by reducing permitting requirements.
• Reform categories: We put each reform into one of 11 different categories that we identified.

• Level of government: While all identified reforms implicate state government, some also implicate federal, local, or tribal action.

• General vs. technology-specific: Indicates whether the identified reform is broadly applicable across project types or tailored to specific technologies (e.g., transmission, renewables, or storage).

All these findings can be explored in more detail in the State Permitting Power Tool, which allows users to identify specific challenges they are trying to solve and view potentially relevant reforms that might help address that challenge. And, for the information-hungry, the tool allows users to review and sort all the challenges and reforms by each of the above characteristics.

All sources that discuss a particular reform idea are linked throughout the tool for easy reference and we strongly encourage users to explore the underlying sources.

Initial takeaways

1. We need to realize that that there is no single solution for “permitting reform,” and more quickly narrow in on specifics.

As noted above, there is no silver-bullet strategy for permitting reform. The “right” solution will depend on each state’s unique challenges and regulatory philosophy.

However, by identifying common challenge and reform types — and by characterizing reforms along dimensions like regulatory posture and scope — our meta-analysis provides a foundation for more precise conversations about what kinds of reforms are being pursued, which problems they are meant to solve, and where important gaps remain.

2. Despite individual contexts, states still face some common challenges when it comes to permitting. Thankfully, there are common reforms and solutions to match.

In our research, we created groups of 11 high-level challenge categories and 12 high-level reform categories that together capture the core permitting dynamics described across the source material.

Categorizing these challenges and reforms by the themes that emerged made pairing them with one another easier and provided insight into other important implications, such as the impact of various challenges on industry experience.

For instance, a challenge that typically falls under the umbrella of “Community Opposition and Social Acceptance” can often be addressed by several different reform types. While the most common reforms target “Community Engagement, Benefits, & Equity,” reforms in other categories like “Governance & Authority Reallocation” or “Redefining the Scope of Permitting Requirements” also emerge. We can also see that community opposition challenges generally have a politicized impact on industry, meaning that they are driven mainly by factors other than technical review and often result in contested or unpredictable permitting outcomes.

3. Reform types can fall across a wide range of philosophical approaches, from fixing the current system to deregulation of the permitting space.

For every reform category, we analyzed and coded additional attributes to better understand how reforms function in practice. As discussed above, we found that some grouped reforms aim to fix the permitting process, others seek to streamline it, and some are meant to deregulate. All three reform types have merit, yet they demonstrate vastly different approaches to addressing permitting challenges.

4. There is no quick fix; but identifying “low-hanging fruit” while working on longer term reform is a great place to start.

Navigating the convoluted world of permitting reform can be overwhelming for states, especially if they face numerous or contradictory challenges. But by focusing on addressing the main or most urgent challenges or prioritizing reforms within their reach, states can still have a significant impact.

The post No Time to Read 36 Resources on State Permitting Reform? We Built an Easy-to-Use Tool That Will Do It for You. appeared first on RMI.

• Source: https://rmi.org/no-time-to-read-36-resources-on-state-permitting-reform-we-built-an-easy-to-use-tool-that-will-do-it-for-you/