Washington DC – Today, at an Energy and Commerce, Energy, Climate, & Grid Security Subcommittee Hearing on the Fiscal Year 2025 Department of Energy budget with Secretary Jennifer Granholm, Representative Scott Peters (CA-50) applauded the Biden Administration’s recent moves to make it easier to build clean energy on non-sensitive land while asking what Congress could do to go further.

During his questioning, Representative Peters asked, “I want to specifically focus on the Department’s actions to expedite permitting for solar and storage technologies on disturbed, developed, and other lower-conflict areas. Can you talk about what you have done so far and what Congress can do to give you more authority to do more of this?”

Secretary Granholm answered, “First of all, thank you so much for your leadership on this. While we can do what we can with administrative powers, we are grateful for the effort to try to seek a bipartisan solution on permitting reform… We are also looking at ways to use categorical exemptions and making sure that we are not requiring doubling the effort at permitting and NEPA reviews when it is not necessary. We are looking at all of those ways to be able to do what we can to move power and cut down on permitting times. But, I know there are other ideas that Congress has been working with and we are supportive of whatever can happen.”

Following up, Rep. Peters stated, “I have often observed that the laws of the 1970s were built for defense… today, as climate action advocates, we are tasked with building a lot of stuff: offshore wind, solar, hydrogen pipelines, direct air capture, everything else. We have to figure out ways to make it go faster. And I would also encourage you to think about preapprovals for particular technologies we understand well and particularly for disturbed areas, where it is not a concern we are disturbing an environmental resource.”

In response, Secretary Granholm opined, “I think that’s exactly right. Those are the exact kind of ideas that we should be pursuing.”

Representative Peters’ full question line can be found here.