The Biden administration has determined to exempt sure initiatives associated to photo voltaic installations, power storage and grid enhancements from environmental opinions as a part of efforts to speed up and decrease the price of clear energy deployment.
Formalized right into a so-called closing rulemaking, the adjustments concern the implementing procedures of the 1970 Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act (NEPA). Unveiled final week, the ultimate rulemaking takes impact 30 days after it’s printed on the Federal Register.
“On this closing rule, DOE provides a categorical exclusion for sure power storage programs and revises categorical exclusions for upgrading and rebuilding powerlines and for photo voltaic photovoltaic (PV) programs”, the official textual content states.
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Categorical exclusion is the best of the three varieties of environmental evaluation motion below NEPA, the opposite two being environmental influence assertion (EIS) and environmental evaluation, in accordance with the DOE.
“A categorical exclusion is a class of actions that the company has decided, as established in its company NEPA procedures, usually doesn’t have a big impact on the human setting and subsequently doesn’t require preparation of an environmental evaluation or environmental influence assertion”, explains the textual content, which has but to be printed on the Federal Register as of Monday.
The brand new rule supplies an exemption from environmental evaluation or EIS for all decommissioning actions for photo voltaic PV programs. It additionally removes the acreage limitation for photo voltaic PV installations to qualify for a categorical exclusion. “[T]he potential significance of environmental impacts is extra associated to native environmental situations than to acreage”, the textual content says.
It notes, “Public feedback raised concern about impacts of photo voltaic PV programs on wildlife and habitat”.
“In response to these issues and to make clear DOE’s intent, DOE has added a situation that the proposed challenge be ‘in line with relevant plans for the administration of wildlife and habitat, together with plans to keep up habitat connectivity’”, says the textual content, shared on the DOE web site.
For storage initiatives, the brand new rule supplies categorical exclusion “for the development, operation, improve, or decommissioning of an electrochemical-battery or flywheel power storage system inside a beforehand disturbed or developed space or inside a small space contiguous to a beforehand disturbed or developed space”, the textual content says.
Nevertheless, the DOE withdrew categorical exclusion for energy storage programs with lower than 10 megawatts of capability “as a result of capability, whether or not denominated in megawatts as a measure of instantaneous output or megawatt-hours as a measure of the overall quantity of power able to being saved, just isn’t a dependable indicator of potential environmental impacts”.
For grids, the brand new rule removes the 20-mile limitation for the explicit exclusion for current powerlines and permits powerline relocation inside a right-of-way or “in any other case beforehand disturbed or developed lands”, says the textual content.
Moreover the brand new rule makes it clear that underwater powerlines don’t qualify for categorical exclusion.
“In assist of the Biden-Harris Administration’s aim to advertise the event of unpolluted power and supporting infrastructure, DOE is taking these steps to cut back the price and time for environmental evaluation incurred by DOE, challenge builders, and the general public for these initiatives”, the DOE stated in a press release.
The proposed rulemaking was unveiled November 2023. The general public remark interval closed January 2024 after a two-week extension.
The DOE additionally introduced final week it was making a closing rule establishing a program to fast-track environmental opinions and allowing processes for transmission initiatives. The Coordinated Interagency Transmission Authorizations and Permits Program “will coordinate a Federal built-in interagency course of to consolidate Federal environmental opinions and authorizations inside a regular two-year schedule whereas making certain significant engagement with Tribes, native communities, and different stakeholders”, the DOE stated in a separate assertion.
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