The Biden administration on April 25 rolled out a new initiative to cut permitting times for interstate and other major transmission projects to two years and announced up to $331 million in support for a 285-mile line that could bring wind energy from Idaho to Nevada and California. 

Under the new Coordinated Interagency Authorizations and Permits (CITAP) program, the Department of Energy will take the lead on permitting transmission projects and coordinate environmental and permitting processes between federal agencies, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm said during an April 24 press briefing. 

DOE’s final rule establishing the CITAP also requires project developers to have comprehensive community participation plans in place before they start the permitting process. 

Granholm called the initiative “a huge improvement from the status quo because developers routinely have to navigate several independent permitting processes throughout the federal government.” 

Granholm also announced that DOE will start negotiating an offtake contract to purchase up to $331 million in electric power capacity from the Southwest Intertie Project-North (SWIP-N), a 285-mile line that will bring wind energy from Idaho to Nevada and California. 

The 2-GW, 500-kV project will provide bidirectional capacity, allowing California and Nevada to send solar and geothermal energy to the Pacific Northwest, according to a DOE fact sheet. The project “will increase grid resilience, especially during wildfires,” Granholm said. 

Both announcements reflect DOE’s “holistic, multifaceted approach to grid improvements and to grid expansions,” both of which will be needed to reach a new administration goal of upgrading 100,000 miles of U.S. transmission lines over the next five years, she said during the press briefing. 

CITAP

The effort to streamline and speed up transmission permitting began in May 2023, when DOE and eight other federal agencies and councils signed a memorandum of understanding expediting what had become a tortuous process for transmission developers ― and a major bottleneck for interconnecting wind and solar projects to the grid. 

Granholm pegged the average permitting time for transmission projects at four years, with some projects taking more than a decade. The poster project for ridiculously long permitting times, Pattern Energy’s SunZia transmission line, now under construction, took 17 years to permit. (See SunZia Project Wins Final Approval, Signs Offtakers.) 

CITAP’s two-year limit on permitting is also in line with the Fiscal Responsibility Act, passed in June 2023, which mandated a two-year cap for environmental reviews required for any energy project on federal land under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). 

The CITAP program is targeted at “regionally or nationally significant transmission lines” of 230 kV or higher that cross state lines and are expected to require an environmental impact statement, according to DOE. Projects may also be eligible if they are approved by the director of DOE’s Grid Deployment Office, are entirely located in ERCOT or are seeking a construction permit from FERC under specific provisions of the Federal Power Act. 

One of the main features of the new program is “an interagency preapplication process to ensure that developer submissions for federal authorizations are ready for review on binding two-year timelines without compromising critical [NEPA] requirements,” according to a DOE press release. The goal is for developers to collect all documentation needed for federal permitting before submitting applications. 

The development of a community participation plan for each CITAP project as part of the preapplication process is intended to ensure “meaningful engagement with tribes, states, local communities and other stakeholders,” according to DOE. 

The department will coordinate with all relevant federal agencies to produce a single NEPA review to reduce duplication of efforts. The CITAP program will be open to state permitting authorities, which will be able to use final NEPA reviews in their own decision-making processes. 

However, CITAP will not affect state permitting authorities, according to a senior administration official speaking on background. 

Coordination between agencies and developers will be handled via an online portal, where developers will be able to upload required documentation and other information. Federal agencies will then be able to review those submissions and provide feedback if changes or further information is needed. 

“If you’re a grid wonk, CITAP is the coolest thing since sliced bread,” National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi said during the press briefing. “What Secretary Granholm has done here is a very path-breaking and inventive approach to getting the grid built out at the speed and scale we need.” 

Southwest Intertie

SWIP-N will be the fourth project DOE has supported through its Transmission Facilitation Program (TFP), launched in October 2023.  

At the time, DOE announced it would be investing $1.5 billion in federal funds to become an anchor off-taker for three interstate transmission projects that together could add 3.5 GW of capacity to the grid. (See DOE to Sign up as Off-taker for 3 Transmission Projects.) 

Authorized in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the TFP has a revolving fund of $2.5 billion to “help overcome the financial hurdles associated with building new, large-scale transmission lines and upgrading existing transmission lines,” DOE said. Having the department as an anchor off-taker may both increase investor confidence and encourage other customers to purchase capacity from the project. 

Developed by Great Basin Transmission, a subsidiary of LS Power, SWIP-N could add 2 GW of capacity to the Western grid. According to DOE’s National Transmission Needs Study, an additional 3.3 GW of transfer capacity will be needed between the Mountain and Northwest regions by 2035; SWIP-N could cover 58% of that total, the department said. 

SWIP-N is the final, northern section of a larger project including both the 60-mile Desert Link line and the 231-mile One Nevada project, both of which are in operation. Construction on SWIP-N will also include an upgrade for a key Nevada substation that could add another gigawatt of capacity on the One Nevada line. 

Having DOE as an off-taker for SWIP-N could provide “an anchor that will allow us to move forward more quickly with procurement activities and securing slots for long-lead equipment, thereby proceeding to construction and placing the project in service faster than otherwise possible,” said Paul Thessen, president of LS Power Development. 

The company anticipates beginning construction on the project in 2025 and bringing it online in 2027. 

Categorical Exclusions

In another move to streamline project permitting, DOE announced an additional final rule April 25 updating its guidelines for issuing “categorical exclusions” for environmental reviews of certain categories of clean energy projects. 

A categorical exclusion is granted when DOE determines that a category or specific kind of project or action will have no significant environmental impact. Expanding the kinds of projects that qualify for exclusions will “reduce the cost and time for environmental analysis incurred by DOE, project developers and the public,” according to the announcement press release. 

In a major push for the updating of transmission lines, DOE widened the categorical exclusion for such projects by lifting the existing 20-mile cap on the length of a transmission line upgrade that can qualify for an exclusion. The new rule also allows exclusions for transmission upgrades involving a relocation within an existing right-of-way or within previously disturbed or developed land. 

The rule specifically refers to reconductoring projects ― installing advanced conductors to expand line capacity ― as a kind of grid upgrade that could be given categorical exclusions. 

For energy storage systems, the new rule allows for categorical exclusions for the construction, operation, upgrade or decommissioning of battery or flywheel storage systems located either within or adjacent to a previously disturbed or developed area. 

DOE issued a categorical exclusion for solar photovoltaic projects on previously disturbed or developed land in 2011, limiting the exclusion to projects of 10 acres or less. This rule has been updated to remove the cap on project size.  

The department noted it was basing the changes on its “years of experience evaluating the environmental impacts of these types of projects” but will “continue to look closely at each proposed project while being able to complete its environmental review in a faster and less expensive manner.”