After decades of flat electric power demand, electricity consumption in the United States is finally rising and?projected to grow by 16 percent?from current levels through 2050. Meeting this demand will require substantial infrastructure expansion throughout the energy sector. Yet even as demand rises, America faces an unprecedented level of restriction on new energy supply. Restrictive permitting and siting policies have received much attention at the federal level, with?Congress passing reforms?in 2023 and considering further reform in 2024 and beyond. However, the?variance in supply constraints?across the country suggests that the most restrictive policies originate at the state level.
Having generally trended in a more restrictive direction, state-level permitting and siting now represents one of the most significant barriers to energy development in most of the country. R Street has put together a new series to explore restrictive permitting in different areas of energy and how these restrictions may or may not bring unintended consequences with them.?
- 13 percent of U.S. counties have at least one ordinance restricting the development of wind energy.?
- Wind turbines are?typically placed 300 meters or more from a feature, such as property lines or bodies of water, but 32 percent of the setback ordinances exceed 300 meters.
- The number of new ordinances per year increased sixteen-fold from 2003-2023, and the average setback requirement increased by 304 percent over the same period.
- About 9 percent of counties in the United States have at least one restriction on the siting of PV solar.
- For PV solar arrays, the setback requirements are generally far more lenient, with most having setback requirements under 100 meters.
- Some new ordinances focus on the maximum or minimum size of solar installations, which may limit their adoption in the future.
- Although 12 states have laws that restrict the deployment of nuclear energy, public sentiment on nuclear power has become more favorable and six states in recent years have modified or repealed nuclear energy restrictions.
- Nuclear power is permitted at the federal level, but states still have a large role in determining whether nuclear power plants can easily be sited.
- Oil and gas infrastructure in the United States has increased along with production, but most of the new infrastructure was only in a handful of states.
- States with high consumption of oil and gas resources lacked new pipeline infrastructure, and even federally permitted projects could be delayed by the role of states in issuing air and water quality permits. By contrast, states with high production have been increasing oil and gas infrastructure capacity.
- Local opposition to oil and gas infrastructure at a political level was more important for determining infrastructure development than oil and gas consumption.
- Approximately 26 percent of U.S. territory is federal land, in the seven states with active geothermal power plants (California, Hawaii, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, and Utah), federal land comprises an average of 45 percent of land. This can create additional layers of permitting complexity for geothermal energy.
- There is limited data upon which to draw conclusions about the effect of state-permitting processes on geothermal development. What data exists suggests that key challenges may reside in other areas, such as the interaction of projects with federal or tribal lands, or with federal laws such as the ESA.
