Permitting
The success of recent climate-related reforms such as the Inflation Reduction Act investments will depend on the government’s ability to lay the groundwork for greener, more efficient infrastructure. Meeting essential climate goals depend on private and public stakeholders’ ability to responsibly site, build and deploy proposed critical clean energy projects – and many of these projects simply can’t happen fast enough without changes to the way the country handles permitting. The urgency of building new clean energy infrastructure – coupled with revised guidance to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) – creates a critical window of opportunity for permitting reform.
FAS supports the federal government as agencies answer the call to innovate talent, data, and regulatory systems that allow us to build infrastructure faster, better, and at lower cost without sacrificing the quality of environmental review.
Throughout this phase of work, there are many actions hiring managers and staffing specialists can take to streamline the process and improve the quality of eligible candidates. Most importantly, hiring managers and staffing specialists can collaborate within and across agencies to expedite and simplify the process.
FAS reached out to over 55 civil servants who work across six agencies and 17 different offices to lea about their experiences trying to hire for permitting-related roles in the implementation of IRA, BIL, and CHIPS.
Most federal agencies consider the start of the hiring process to be the development of the job posting, but the process really begins well before the job is posted and the official clock starts.
Analyzing NEPA outcomes isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s an essential step for eliminating the biggest hurdles of the environmental review process.
We don’t control the externalities that can make or break hiring — changing budgets, timelines and workload, priority shifts — but we can influence the quality of our talent acquisition relationships, whether we are a hiring manager or an HR professional.
In the world of permitting, there are two distinct areas: (1) environmental reviews under NEPA and a state’s equivalent and (2) the permitting process made up of permit forms and checkboxes.
As AI is seen as the golden ticket to fixing all of our problems, we wanted to take a step back and say, “Where are places that are ripe for technology?” and “Where do we need to lean in policy and process reform?”.
Historical federal investments in climate resilience, clean energy, and new infrastructure will all hinge on the government’s ability to efficiently permit, site, and build key projects.
A recent wave of historic federal investments in climate resilience, the clean energy transition, and new infrastructure means the government must deliver on a sprawling range of new projects tied to our national environmental goals.
To achieve NEPA’s objectives, federal agencies need a new, unified approach to technology capable of modernizing federal permitting and related processes.
wildfire,
federal permitting
Design Research,
Customer Experience
Government innovation