The Biden administration’s new permitting fixer

Eric Beightel is possibly the Biden administration’s best hope to ease the infrastructure permitting logjam.

Beightel was tapped last week to be the next executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council, a unique federal agency established in 2015 to iron out kinks in how agencies conduct environmental reviews across agencies. It’s seen its budget increase three-fold and is poised to take on more responsibility as President Joe Biden looks to deliver the buildout of unprecedented amounts of clean energy infrastructure to meet his climate goals.

Beightel, who starts July 3, said in an interview that he’s aiming to help smooth the interaction between agencies and project developers, even as Congress looks to overhaul the rules that many blame for slowing construction of both fossil fuel and clean energy infrastructure. He said he hopes to develop a template to help guide interstate transmission projects and enable them to move through the approval process faster.

The following conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What are some of your goals, especially with the need to build so much clean energy infrastructure to support the president’s climate policies?

Reducing or eliminating the avoidable delays. How do we ensure we are coordinating amongst the sponsor and agencies in a way that maintains an open line of communication that people aren’t holding information back, and that things aren’t surfaced at a point in time where it’s too late to make a remedy?

Another would be orienting the agency as more of a customer service focus both to the applicants and member agencies. We are a resource. We are uniquely positioned within the federal government as a convener of agencies and project sponsors. We are one of the few — if not the only agency — that has a direct conduit to both the applicant and the decision maker. We don’t make decisions, but we help facilitate.

The debt ceiling bill has some changes around the National Environmental Policy Act. In your experience, how much as NEPA presented itself as a barrier?

I am more of a NEPA purist in some regards. I’ve spent a lot of my time working in NEPA. I don’t think NEPA itself is a problem. It is the different applications of how agencies follow their NEPA procedures to get to a permit decision. That is what creates the problem.

The structure itself is there to inform the public, to analyze alternatives, and to understand the effects of those alternatives. But each agency will take that information for a different purpose.

And the “One Federal Decision” in the debt ceiling bill that puts in statute what was in the 2020 [Council on Environmental Quality] regulations will force more upfront coordination to ensure the decisions that are made by the lead agency are going to support the permitting decisions. Oftentimes it’s the phrase, “analysis by paralysis,” because we don’t want NEPA to be a rock-bringing exercise. We want it to inform decision-making and we want to be upfront on what the requirements are to inform those decisions.

If we do that, NEPA will work as it’s intended, which is to analyze the effects, inform the public and support the ultimate federal decision.

Do you see the provision in the debt bill that says analyses of projects being permitted under NEPA should focus on “reasonably foreseeable environmental effects” as helpful or just reinforcing the status quo, as CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory recently told the House Natural Resources Committee?

Putting this into statute minimizes the pendulum swing some as administrations may change and priorities may change. It solidifies that approach. But from a practical standpoint, I don’t know that it will change significantly.

I will rarely put NEPA as the fall guy for these things, because it's a process

–Eric Beightel, executive director of the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council

How big of a problem generally is lack of funding for agencies when it comes to permitting?

One of the key bottlenecks is staff capacity at agencies just generally. They are not adequately staffed and it’s hard to find experienced staff who have the knowledge and awareness of how the processes go. With an infusion of trillions of dollars from [the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act], we are going to have a significant increase in the permit volume applications to resource agencies that are historically understaffed anyway. That is going to present challenges.

The IRA recognized that and provided hundreds of millions of dollars to support their staffing and equip them with the tools they need. But everybody faces the same labor market. It’s not easy to bring people on quickly, and it’s not easy to get them trained up in time for all of this. So there is going to be some additional need for support.

What do you see as the challenges and opportunities around transmission permitting?

Transmission projects are inherently complex because of the length and the multiple jurisdictions they cross, and they may cross states that may not have a direct benefit from the project. One of the areas I would like for the Permitting Council to focus [on] is building some sort of structure that would be a template for interstate projects to follow that would enable them to get through the process sooner.

I don’t have an answer to that but I think there’s opportunity there. We’ve done it elsewhere in the past. So what can we learn from how those interstate projects were delivered that could inform a template or model for others to follow in the future?

How much is NEPA a roadblock for transmission?

I will rarely put NEPA as the fall guy for these things because it’s a process. If the process is navigated appropriately, it will work out fine. But if you make missteps or don’t coordinate or communicate effectively, then it can create roadblocks. If applied appropriately, NEPA is an information-gathering and sharing exercise. It does not necessarily mandate an outcome. If done appropriately, it can be a very beneficial tool to inform everyone what the potential impacts are but also what the benefits are.

Do you view the litigation issue as a challenge?

Yes. You are never going to be able to ward off all litigation. There is always going to be potential for a challenge. But one way to minimize that risk is effective outreach upfront to identify what the issues are and try to address them so you don’t get to the point where you have a constituency that wants to use the courts as a means to stop a project because you have already answered their problems and you brought them on — if not made them a supporter, at least reduce their opposition.

We can’t shortchange the opportunity, particularly for disadvantaged and lower-income communities, to be able to voice their concerns and ensure those voices are heard. But we also don’t want these things to be open-ended questions. That’s a balance we’ll have to strike.

Overall, though, do you think there is a need for Congress to step in and do more with legislation, whether on litigation reform or transmission?

We all recognize the processes that were created 40, 50, 60 years ago are not working to their fullest potential now. Things have changed, needs have changed. There is still value in revisiting how we do some of this and refining it to help it move better to make it more efficient. But at the same time, it’s those tradeoffs. What are we giving up in the process in order to make it move more efficiently that doesn’t reduce the opportunity for input, coordination, all of that sort of stuff?

We expect there will be additional permitting reform in this Congress, and I am eager to work with the Hill on what that looks like and provide whatever support the Permitting Council can provide.

By Josh Siegel for Politico