Huffington Magazine Issue 39 | Page 47

SCOTT J. FERRELL/CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY/GETTY IMAGES SINKING IN BUREAUCRACY process, the practice of completing environmental reviews for major infrastructure projects has significantly lengthened average project delivery times. For example, in 2011, the average time it took to complete an environmental impact statement on a highway project was over eight years, compared with two years just after the law was passed.” The costs of such delays are extremely difficult to quantify, but critics suggest trillions of dollars of lost economic activity. In 2011, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby in the country, reviewed “351 proposed solar, wind, wave, bio-fuel, coal, gas, HUFFINGTON 03.10.13 nuclear and energy transmission projects” — all of which had been delayed or canceled due to what the chamber called “regulatory barriers, including inefficient review processes and the attendant lawsuits and threats of legal action.” While noting that not all of the proposed projects would — or even should — be ultimately approved, th e chamber put their collective economic value, if operated for 20 years, at $3.4 trillion in gross domestic product. This included “$1.4 trillion in employment earnings ... and an additional one million or more jobs per year,” the chamber noted. This wouldn’t necessarily come as a surprise to Dennis Duffy, an attorney and Cape Wind’s vice president, who has testified before Congress on the need to stream- Jim Gordon with other advocates at a House Natural Resources hearing on “Identifying Roadblocks to Wind and Solar Energy on Public Lands and Waters.”