Full Title: Building Cleaner, Faster
Author(s): The Aspen Institute
Publisher(s): The Aspen Institute
Publication Date: June 15, 2021
Full Text: Download Resource
Description (excerpt):
On March 31, President Biden announced “The American Jobs Plan” as part of his Build Back Better agenda to accomplish two important missions: (1) decarbonizing the nation’s economy to address the challenges of climate change and the energy transition; and (2) growing jobs and the economy while simultaneously making the nation’s infrastructure more resilient. The White House announcement focused on fiscal, policy, and regulatory goals. This paper solves for the critical missing link: the need to address the challenges of delay, uncertainty, and cost of our current environmental review and permitting system that threatens the build out of decarbonization infrastructure. As described below, there is well established precedent for both Congress and the Executive Branch introducing regulatory tools for streamlining the approval process for environmental projects that will bring net benefits and otherwise comply with strict requirements.
Anticipating the Administration’s bold proposals for urgent economy-wide action on climate change, the Aspen Institute Energy & Environment Program convened a group of policymakers, experts, and practitioners to consider solutions to expedite climate action.