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.”