by Jbs111009 i3 — November 13, 2009—Obama administration officials recently released a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) (.pdf file) signed by nine federal departments and agencies to make it faster and simpler to build transmission lines on federal lands.
The goal of the agreement is to speed approval of new transmission lines, reduce expense and uncertainty in the process, generate cost savings, increase accessibility to renewable energy, and jumpstart job creation.
As President Obama announced in his speech the day before, the agreement “will help break down the bureaucratic barriers that currently make it slow and costly to build new transmission lines on federal lands.”
The MOU was signed by the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, and Interior; the Environmental Protection Agency; the White House Council on Environmental Quality; the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission; and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
The agreement will cut the approval time for obtaining federal permits by designating a single point of contact for all federal authorizations, establishing clear timelines for agency review, facilitating coordination and unified environmental documentation among all agencies involved in the siting and permitting process, and establishing a single consolidated environmental review and administrative record.
As a result of the new process, applicants will go to a single lead agency that will coordinate all permits and approvals. However, the MOU does not alter the authority of any participating agencies, and all existing environmental reviews and safeguards are fully maintained, notes the government.
