News Roundup

White House Releases Plan to Speed Up Federal Infrastructure Reviews

The Biden Administration has released a new “action plan” to attempt to speed up federal permitting of infrastructure projects including clean energy, while still giving stakeholders such as tribal members sufficient opportunities to participate. The action plan focuses on cross-agency coordination, establishing clear timelines goals and tracking project information, early and meaningful engagement of stakeholders, and improving responsiveness and support. Part of this will be through increased staffing to agencies. The plan will create sector-specific teams in the permitting council, including one for offshore wind and one for renewable energy writ large. E&E News has noted that the plan does not carry the weight of an executive order and questioned what about the plan will be different from past efforts.

News coverage: White House issues ‘action plan’ to speed up energy reviews (E&E News)
Source: The Biden-Harris Permitting Action Plan to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure, Accelerate the
Clean Energy Transition, Revitalize Communities, and Create Jobs (E&E News)

Lawsuits, Legislation Attempt to Stop the Postal Service from Buying ICE Trucks

Environmental groups, state attorney generals and a union are all filing lawsuits to attempt to stop the Postmaster Louis DeJoy from replacing the U.S. Post Office’s fleet of up to 165,000 delivery vehicles with internal combustion engine vehicles. Concurrently, a U.S. House committee has passed a bill that would invalidate the Post Office’s environmental review in an attempt to derail the current sale and force the Post Office to buy more EVs. Postmaster DeJoy, a Trump appointee, has been under steady criticism for signing a deal with a Wisconsin military vehicle provider to replace the Post Office’s fleet of vehicles with 90% internal combustion vehicles. This move is in direct conflict with President Biden’s goal to replace the entire federal vehicle fleet with American-made EVs. The federal government owns around 645,000
vehicles, and the Post Office’s 220,000 vehicles are the largest single portion.

News coverage: Lawsuits seek to stop Postal Service from buying gas-guzzling trucks (Canary
Media)
News coverage: Panel moves bill to scrap NEPA study of Postal Service fleet (E&E News)

California Proposes 3 Gigawatts of Offshore Wind by 2030

On 13 May the California Energy Commission published a draft report setting a “preliminary planning goal” for the state to install 3 gigawatts of offshore wind by 2030, with an additional 7 – 12 gigawatts by 2045. This would be the first such goal for a state on the West Coast, and would be more ambitious than many other states that seek to deploy offshore wind. The report plans for the initial 3 gigawatts to come from planning areas in Morro Bay off the Central Coast and off the shore of Humboldt County in Northern California.

The report makes repeated references to floating turbines. Due to the steep drop-off in the Pacific Ocean, it is likely that much or all of the offshore wind deployed off the coast of California will need to be floating designs anchored to the seabed with cables, instead of the fixed offshore wind designs utilized on the East Coast. E&E News says that a finalized version of the plan could come as early as June.

Source: Offshore Wind Energy Development off the California Coast: Maximum Feasible Capacity
and Megawatt Planning Goals for 2030 and 2045 (California Energy Commission)
News coverage: Calif. unveils largest U.S. offshore wind target (E&E News)