SINKING IN
BUREAUCRACY
since joined Cape Wind and are
now vying to be the first to become
operational, but the odds that any
of them will overcome the necessary hurdles during the president’s
second term are hard to predict.
To help expedite matters, DOE in
December announced some $168
million in funding over the next six
years for seven offshore demonstration projects. And that funding
came on the heels of the Department of Interior’s first-ever plans
to open up some 164,000 acres
along the Atlantic coast for lease
sales to commercial offshore wind
power developers.
The move is part of the Obama
administration’s “Smart from the
Start” program, launched in 2010
— not long after final federal approval for Cape Wind was issued
— and is designed to speed offshore
wind power development off the
Atlantic Coast. “The Cape Wind
lease is an historic milestone in
America’s renewable energy future,
but to fully harness the economic
and energy benefits of our nation’s
vast Atlantic wind potential we
need to implement a smart permitting process that is efficient, thorough, and unburdened by needless
red tape,” Salazar said at the time.
But that program would only
HUFFINGTON
03.10.13
“OUR EXISTING ENVIRONMENTAL
LAWS AND REGULATORY
PROCESSES NO LONGER ACHIEVE
THEIR UNDERLYING GOALS ...”
help to speed up leasing for offshore wind. In most cases, projects would still need to undergo a
full environmental review — and
the agonizingly protracted scoping
and litigation that so often comes
with it.
“I was very happy to see it,” said
Duffy, the attorney and vice president of the Cape Wind project, referring to the Smart from the Start
program. “But it doesn’t address
the conflicting positions of different
agencies or the possibility of multiple agency appeals, perhaps even in
different courts. It still doesn’t put
a time limit on things.”
Reform advocates at Common
Good have pointed to other countries with flourishing renewable
energy industries, including Great
Britain, Denmark and Germany,
where processes for regulating and
permitting clean energy projects
were designed in many cases from
the ground up. These so-called onestop shop systems identify a single
government agency as the designated handler of renewable project