A letter organized by the Photo voltaic Vitality Industries Affiliation and signed by 143 photo voltaic corporations is heading to the U.S. Senate and the Home of Representatives in response to a Division of Inside (DOI) memo that has just about reduce all allowing on photo voltaic tasks involving the division.
Credit score: Primoris Renewable Vitality
“Federal companies are implementing this directive in a approach that quantities to an almost full moratorium on allowing for any undertaking during which the Division of Inside might play a task, on each federal and personal land, regardless of how minor,” wrote 143 photo voltaic corporations within the letter. “Companies want certainty so as to proceed making investments in the USA to construct out much-needed vitality tasks. Certainty should embody a assessment course of that doesn’t discriminate by vitality supply. We urge Congress to maintain equity and certainty on the heart of allowing negotiations.”
The memo issued in July is anxious with federal allowing on wind and photo voltaic tasks on websites belonging to or contiguous to federal land, or websites utilizing federal assets. The memo states that “all selections, actions, consultations and different undertakings” concerning wind and photo voltaic vitality services have to be submitted to the Workplace of the Government Secretariat and Regulatory Affairs, then reviewed by the Workplace of the Deputy Secretary, for a last assessment by the Workplace of the Secretary, adopted by an inventory of 69 completely different allowing objects underneath the DOI’s purview.
“For America’s photo voltaic trade, allowing reform begins with allow certainty. As 143 photo voltaic corporations wrote of their letter to our congressional leaders, with out motion to deal with this unequal therapy of photo voltaic vitality, the trade will proceed to face important obstacles to deployment and funding at a time of skyrocketing vitality demand,” mentioned SEIA president and CEO Abigail Ross Hopper. “Whereas the photo voltaic trade values the continued bipartisan engagement on allowing reform, the SPEED Act, as handed out of committee, falls in need of addressing this core drawback: the continuing allowing moratorium.”
SEIA published an analysis in November of Vitality Data Administration information estimating {that a} pipeline of greater than 500 photo voltaic and vitality storage tasks representing 116 GW of capability are being stalled following the DOI’s allowing modifications.
“To be clear, there is no such thing as a query we’d like allowing reform,” Hopper mentioned. “There’s an settlement to be reached, and SEIA and our 1,200 member corporations will proceed our months-long effort to advocate for a deal that ensures equal therapy of all vitality sources, as a result of the present standing of this blockade is unsustainable.”
