Future-fitting the grid: How to accelerate federal transmission permitting

The United States is at a critical crossroads on permitting and transmission. We need to build more transmission – about three to four times the current capacity over the next 30 years – to deliver clean power, make electricity more affordable, protect the grid from severe weather and security threats, and decarbonize the economy.  

The current state of transmission planning and development has failed to rise to the challenge. In fact, just when grid expansion is most needed, annual investments in large power lines nationwide are declining.  

However, a flurry of new federal rules and orders, as well as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), have the potential to shake up the status quo and usher in a new era for transmission development. 

Federal progress to enable efficient and equitable transmission development  

Siting and permitting interstate lines 

Building the long-distance, high-voltage transmission lines needed to connect clean energy resources with population centers is complicated.  

Every state, Tribal, or public land border a power line crosses subjects transmission developers to more varied regulatory, policy, and political environments. Longer lines are inherently more likely to encounter more borders. In a recent report with the Niskanen Center, CATF found that although only small fraction of projects undergo federal environmental review (3.5%), these projects comprise 26% of all new line miles added to the bulk power system. Instead of wading into this complicated landscape, many developers opt to build smaller, shorter lines that will not, in aggregate, efficiently incorporate new, clean resources and get power where it is most needed. 

Just last month, DOE announced an important initiative to kick start the development of long-distance, high-voltage lines. It made public several proposed National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors (NIETC), or corridors in which new transmission is needed to alleviate congestion and costs to ratepayers. Proposed and future NIETCs can unlock significant clean energy potential, including from Atlantic offshore wind facilities. Among other benefits, transmission projects built in these corridors would be eligible for streamlined siting (with procedures established by the recently issued FERC Order 1977) and for IRA and IIJA funding.¹ 

And in a big step forward in improving the current federal permitting process for transmission, DOE finalized rules for its Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits (CITAP) program, which establishes DOE as the lead agency for National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) reviews for qualifying high-powered nationally or regionally important lines. This change gives eligible project developers a clear point of contact within the federal government during the review process, a better understanding of required documents, and a schedule for shorter-than-average NEPA review timeline of 2 years.  

In addition to improved coordination of DOE’s review of transmission lines, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) recently finalized government-wide NEPA regulations. Those regulations cover what level of NEPA review is appropriate for a project. Among other considerations, federal agencies should consider the significance of an action’s impacts to communities with environmental justice concerns. This aspect of NEPA analysis, which CATF supported in comments on the rulemaking, will ensure impacts to the number of communities that may be impacted by long-distance lines are included in federal decision-making. 

Planning 

An ideal U.S. transmission grid would be well-planned and consider changes in electricity demand, the introduction of new clean energy resources, grid congestion, and numerous other factors nationwide. Today, however, current transmission planning processes at state, regional, and interregional levels are out of sync. And lines passing through more than one state or region can be subject to different methods of planning and recouping costs.  

With the long-awaited Order 1920 on transmission and cost allocation released just last month, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) now requires transmission providers to conduct long-term transmission planning and update those plans every five years. Providers must also consider specific factors in their plans such as Tribal, state, utility, and corporate emissions reduction commitments and update their interregional transmission plans accordingly.  

Opportunities going forward 

The U.S. has made great progress this year, but more action and coordination is needed at all levels of government to site, permit, develop, and build transmission at scale, while positioning transmission as a national priority. 

• Facilitating Data Accessibility and Transparency: Federal agencies can improve data availability around transmission development timelines and processes to facilitate better coordination between government agencies and between those agencies and developers working together on transmission permitting. Better data would also provide more transparency for developers, policymakers, and researchers in understanding permitting roadblocks. The CITAP online portal is a great start for CITAP-eligible projects. IIJA amendments to FAST-41 also allow the Director of the Permitting Council to expand the existing FAST-41 dashboard to include projects not qualifying for FAST-41 in the interest of transparency.  

• Providing Technical Assistance and Best Practices: Federal agencies, ideally with Congressional support, can provide technical assistance, share best practices, and dedicate grants that enhance state and Tribal capacity to conduct and participate in permitting processes. 

• Harmonizing State Permitting Processes: A new report from Clean Air Task Force (CATF) and Regulatory Assistance Project, with support from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, offers a snapshot of renewable energy siting across the United States and confirms that state approaches to permitting and siting can be drastically different. Our report with the Niskanen Center found state approaches to transmission also vary greatly. States can work together to harmonize their permitting processes, and can consider incorporating concurrent federal processes into their state permitting requirements, to make interstate transmission easier to build. 

• Designating Offshore Transmission Corridors: In a future round of NIETC designations, DOE should consider selecting an offshore transmission corridor proposed in its Atlantic Offshore Wind Transmission Action Plan to spur the development of interregional offshore transmission capacity. 

• Advancing Regional and Interregional Transmission Planning: FERC and RTOs should build on recent progress on regional transmission planning and continue to work together to improve interregional transmission planning processes and incentivize long-distance lines. 

CATF is working to keep up momentum on transmission deployment and to build on emerging opportunities that lead to a more secure, reliable, affordable, and resilient grid. It’s important that grid flexibly integrate new clean energy resources, effectively manage demand from new economic sectors, and stand up to increasingly severe weather events. We are exploring region-specific implications of clean energy and transmission in New England, investigating financing options that can enable more rapid transmission buildout, and evaluating the impacts that new federal rules and processes could have on accelerating transmission permitting and environmental review timelines.  

Learn more about CATF’s work on clean energy infrastructure deployment here on our website.  

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¹ CATF has a Power Decarbonization Funding Tracker that includes grid-specific funding opportunities and grant programs.