Key ideas: Philanthropy's role in powering a modern gridConsequences of Deployment Barriers The U.S. has seen a recent spur in solar, wind, and battery deployment , adding roughly 229 GW of capacity between 2020 and 2024.63 The passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) drove many of these investments, and were projected to add a combined total of 390 to 850 GW of solar, wind, and battery storage capacity by 2030. This would roughly equate to 44 to 93 GW of solar and wind, and 5 to 12 GW of battery storage being deployed every single year between 2023 to 2030. While these projections equate to a massive power sector emissions reduction–72% to 91% reduction below 2005 levels–achieving such a large buildout of clean power depends on overcoming a variety of deployment barriers.64
Deployment rates and decarbonization targets will become even more challenging to meet after the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). Projected deployment of solar and wind will decrease significantly compared to a scenario where IRA tax credits had been maintained. However, the market will still spur heavy growth in these sectors. Up until 2030, we could see an average deployment of 33 to 35 GW of solar, wind, and batteries, as seen in Figure 7 . Again, these projections face one major uncertainty: there are still significant deployment barriers that could hold back the buildout of renewables.65 To continue deploying high levels of renewables, especially without tax incentives, the U.S. needs to remove barriers to deployment.
Figure 7: Average annual net capacity change in Gigawatts (additions less retirements) (Source: Rhodium Group, 2025)66Deployment Challenge Areas We identify three major opportunities for addressing barriers to clean energy deployment:
Streamlining and accelerating federal permitting. Removing and preventing local permitting and siting roadblocks. Modernizing the interconnection process and clearing the backlog. We believe that philanthropy has the opportunity to drive progress across all three barriers and ensure the U.S. continues to make strides in decarbonizing the grid.
Streamlining and Accelerating Federal Permitting Key ideas: Streamlining and accelerating federal permitting5. Philanthropy can play a catalytic role in advancing permitting reform. Funders can educate policymakers, support research on policy design and impact, coordinate stakeholders, and advocate for federalizing or modernizing transmission permitting to accelerate clean energy deployment.All energy facilities require permits at the local, state, and interstate levels, but only transmission lines and large-scale projects typically require federal permits.67 In recent years, federal permitting has become increasingly challenging, resulting in delays or even cancellations of energy infrastructure projects. 68 These challenges generally fall into two categories: (1) transmission permitting issues and (2) broader federal permitting issues affecting large-scale energy projects such as nuclear, geothermal, and utility-scale solar facilities.69 We believe that both of these federal permitting challenge areas can benefit from additional philanthropic support.
Building More Transmission Transmission buildout is crucial to deploying high rates of renewables: For VRE deployment to continue growing, transmission will be needed to connect remote areas with concentrated wind and solar resources to centers of demand further away.70 Beyond decarbonizing the grid, expanding transmission capacity will also be critical for reliability and resilience as electricity demand rises, as described in Figure 8 .71
Figure 8: Grid benefits of transmission buildout (Source: NREL, 2024)72Looking ahead, to meet projected electricity demand, the U.S. transmission system will need to grow substantially: by 2050, the transmission system must be 2.1 to 2.6 times the size of the transmission system in 2020, and between 2.4 and 3.5 times larger if we are to achieve a 90% reduction in grid emissions by 2035 and 100% by 2050.73
The U.S. is not building enough transmission: Despite the clear need, transmission buildout remains far below required levels to meet our climate targets. To meet even the minimum projected demand growth by 2050, the U.S. will need to build 5,000 miles of new transmission lines each year—a pace far higher than what has been achieved over the last 15 years, as seen in Figure 9 .74
Figure 9: Miles of new 345 kV+ transmission lines built over the last 15 years (Source: Grid Strategies LLC, 2025)75There have been recent policy efforts, however, to support the buildout of transmission, such as the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Order 1920. This FERC order requires all transmission planning regions to conduct detailed, long-term, scenario-based transmission planning, something many regions do not currently do.76 In the long run this will help identify more potential transmission projects and improve coordination; however, it will not overcome the deeper barriers that have slowed transmission deployment on its own.
Permitting is holding back transmission buildout: A major barrier to transmission buildout is the challenging and complex siting and permitting process. Throughout this process, multiple government jurisdictions—all the way from the local to the federal level—will oversee and permit a transmission line, creating numerous opportunities for delay, especially when a project crosses state lines.77 Federal permitting alone can take years, with transmission projects averaging seven years to receive approval compared to three years for natural gas pipelines, as seen in Figure 10 .78 This imbalance in permitting timelines strongly suggests that there are areas for transmission permitting improvement.
Figure 10: Time taken for federal permit review, as of September 23, 2022 (Source: Brookings, 2023)79Longer transmission lines, which are often required to connect renewable resources, face even greater permitting hurdles. For example, while only 3.6% of transmission projects between 2010 and 2020 underwent a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)–the most stringent environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)–these projects accounted for 26% of all transmission miles built during this time period.80
Some of the permitting challenges causing transmission delays stem from general issues that also affect other types of projects, as discussed in the section below, but transmission also faces its own specific permitting hurdles. Many of these challenges stem from the fact that a majority of transmission permitting is conducted at the local and state levels. For example, many states have limited staff and budgets that keep them from actively participating in transmission planning before the permitting process. If they can, states may even be reluctant to plan or permit interregional transmission over the fear they would be subsidizing other states’ benefits at the expense of their own constituents.81 However, if a state decides to plan a transmission project and move on to permitting, various local and state offices will review the transmission project to determine which permits it needs, creating an arduous and lengthy process. This is further complicated by the fact that a transmission project may require time-bound permits, meaning if there is a holdup with one permit, it could force other permits to expire.82
Without reforms, delays will reduce the deployment of VRE and push the grid toward a greater reliance on natural gas and even coal , as shown in Figure 11 .83 While there are opportunities to improve state and local processes, many experts have proposed federalizing the transmission siting permitting process to avoid the complexity and inefficiencies of the current process altogether. We believe this is a high-impact opportunity that could benefit from philanthropic support.
Figure 11: Effects of transmission delays on power generation by energy source, in 2032 (Source: Resources for the Future, 2025)85Other areas to explore in the future: Permitting is a major and immediate roadblock to the buildout of transmission; however, there are additional financing and policy challenges holding transmission back.86 While this report does not cover these challenges, this may be an area we look further into in the future. Similarly, this report does not explore other advanced transmission technologies, such as grid-enhancing technologies and advanced conductors, which could help improve the performance of existing infrastructure and support the deployment of clean energy alongside transmission buildout.87 This is another area we may explore in the future.
Role for philanthropy: Building more transmissionAvoiding General Federal Permitting Delays Background: All clean energy and transmission projects require permitting from local and state governments. However, larger projects and projects sited on federal land often need a host of federal permits. In total, there are roughly 50 federal permits that may be relevant to a clean energy or transmission project. A majority of these permits fall under three categories: wildlife protection, air and water protection, and federal/protected land usage.88 Projects that require a federal permit must also comply with federal procedural laws. The most common example is NEPA, which requires a project to assess any potential environmental impact through an environmental assessment (EA) and, if significant impacts are identified, a more stringent EIS. It is important to note, however, that NEPA does not normally apply to small projects through a categorical exclusion.89
Federal permits can delay a project by years: On average, energy generation and transmission projects require five to six years to obtain federal permits.90 Although not all clean energy projects are subject to federal review, larger-scale technologies—such as nuclear power plants—or those with potential siting opportunities on federal lands—including geothermal and solar projects in the Midwest—are more frequently affected by federal permitting requirements.91 It is also uncommon for a project to require only a single federal permit; most projects must secure at least two to four.92 Each additional permitting requirement increases the likelihood of multi-year delays, as illustrated in Figure 12 . These delays not only raise overall project costs but also impede the timely deployment of new capacity at a moment when demand growth is accelerating faster than supply.93
Figure 12: Time taken for federal permit view stages, as of September 23, 2022 (Source: Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023)94NEPA is a challenge, but not the sole problem: NEPA reviews, which have been at the center of permitting debates, are not the primary obstacle for most projects. For example, between 2010 and 2023, roughly 10% of new solar capacity and 3.7% wind capacity were subject to NEPA review. This represents a relatively small share of new VRE capacity and has not been a significant factor constraining overall solar and wind growth. Nevertheless, NEPA can still create delays for a subset of high-capacity VRE projects and therefore remains a barrier to deployment.95 Other clean energy technologies, such as nuclear and transmission lines, however, face a greater threat of NEPA reviews and subsequent delays.
Figure 13: Time for EIS under NEPA for renewable energy and electric transmission for the period 2010-2018 (Source: Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023)96For example, a new geothermal plant may be subject to as many as six separate NEPA reviews over the course of its development, creating substantial risks of delay and extending project timelines by several years. For context, NEPA reviews for geothermal lease nominations alone take between one and four years to complete.97 As illustrated in Figure 13 , the average timeline for completing a single EIS varies across clean energy technologies, highlighting the potential delays such reviews can impose. Despite the apparent challenge, especially for technologies like transmission, we are unsure whether NEPA reform will lead to deep impacts across all clean technologies. However, we still believe that further federal permitting research and policy development that includes NEPA is an impactful area for philanthropy to engage in.
Challenges behind federal permitting delays: Given the widespread nature of federal permitting, there is no single challenge responsible for delays. Instead, there are many potential factors that different experts point to:
Federal agencies face capacity constraints: Insufficient funding, staffing, and access to necessary technologies at federal agencies responsible for reviewing permits and conducting NEPA assessments have repeatedly been cited as sources of delay. Over the last two decades, different studies have found that a lack in one of these three tools has led to permitting delays in federal agencies.98 Recent cuts to federal agency funding and a roughly 300,000 reduction in federal employees may further exacerbate these challenges, although the full implications remain uncertain.99 Federal permitting requires interagency coordination: With multiple agencies involved in the permitting process of a project, there is potential for inefficiencies. There have been improvements in agency coordination with policies such as Title 41 of the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (FAST-41) and the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC). However, these efforts only apply to specific sets of projects, meaning there is still room for improvement.100 Federal permitting can face legal challenges and judicial review: A large challenge with federal permitting, especially in regards to NEPA, is the delay caused by legal challenges and judicial reviews. Various different clean energy projects have faced legal challenges based on their permitting, and especially regarding their NEPA findings, as seen in Figure 14 .101 Figure 14: Litigation and cancellation rates for energy projects that received an EIS (Source: Institute for Progress, 2024)102While most NEPA litigation is filed to reduce environmental impacts, there have been cases where NEPA litigation has been used as an obstructionist tactic to promote personal benefits.103 In both cases, lawsuits against projects tend to end in favor of the federal agencies conducting the NEPA analysis; however, despite the outcome, litigation still extends a project’s timeline and leads to harmful delays.104 On average, district courts have come to a ruling within a year, and cases that were appealed to the appellate courts have taken at least an additional two years to reach a final ruling.105
Permitting reform, not repeal: It is important to note that while there is room for permitting improvement, existing permitting laws should not be dismantled. Several experts have shared their concerns regarding the potential negative implications if current federal law is substantially weakened.106 Permitting reform must focus on improving the efficiency of the permitting process and ruling out waste and abuse, all while ensuring permits continue to function as intended.
Role for philanthropy: Avoiding general federal permitting delaysRemoving and Preventing Local Permitting and Siting Delays Key ideas: Removing and preventing local permitting and siting delays5. Philanthropy can play a key role in reversing restrictive siting trends. Funders can support local and state governments with technical expertise, engage conservative and unaligned constituencies, research siting dynamics, and advocate for the reversal or prevention of restrictive local ordinances.Background Before a renewable project begins construction, it must adhere to local siting policies to ensure that the project is in an eligible location and meets all design requirements. These siting policies, and the relevant regulatory authority that oversees them, vary between states and may even vary across different local governments within a state.107 At a high level, there are five ways a state may decide to allocate its siting authority for clean energy:108
The local government has primary control over siting. The state government has primary control over siting. Both local and state governments will have some level of control over siting. The local government will have control over siting with guardrails that the state sets. There are minimal to no siting regulations, and landowners have control. In most states, however, a combination of different approaches is used, as seen in Figure 15 . This is because states will often provide two different pathways for projects to be sited and permitted based on the project size, or in some circumstances, a state may provide several options to choose from.109
Figure 15: Siting policy frameworks by state (Source: Clean Tomorrow, 2025)110Beyond these pathways, states will also apply different restrictions and requirements for clean energy siting and permitting, making every state's approach unique, even if they share a general approach to siting and permitting. Examples of these different variations can be found in Appendix D. While having many different variations in siting and permitting becomes complicated to maneuver, it allows states to adapt their siting and permitting processes to fit what works best for them.111 For example, a state may adjust specific siting standards for clean energy resources that are widely available in its region to be more restrictive to manage buildout.
Growing clean energy siting challenges: Across the U.S., there is a growing trend of local governments challenging and preventing the siting and construction of renewable energy projects. This is coming in the form of local ordinances that either place stringent restrictions on siting renewable projects or complete bans altogether.112 In total, 459 local governments across 44 states, as well as 16 states themselves, have enacted restrictive siting policies for renewable energy projects. Combined, this has led to at least 498 contested renewable energy projects in 2024 across the entire country.113 The breakdown of local government restrictions and the number of contested renewable energy projects is not concentrated in Republican or Democrat leaning states, as seen in Figure 16 . This is a widespread challenge that the entire country is grappling with.
Figure 16: Opposition to renewable energy facilities in the U.S. (Source: Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, 2025)114A study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) found that the level of local ordinances in 2022, which is lower than the number at the end of 2024, could reduce solar and wind energy up to 38% and 87% respectively.115 This modeling also only considered the impact setback ordinances had on available land for renewable energy projects, and therefore, the amount of potential generation. When taking into consideration other types of ordinances, the total impact could be much greater.116
While we do not have final data yet for 2025, current renewable energy siting restriction efforts at the state level also seem to be growing. Nearly 150 state bills have been introduced so far this year that restrict the siting and deployment of renewable energy. States with the greatest level of renewable energy deployment in the last decade are also the states that have introduced the greatest amount of restrictive bills.117 The number of bills passed so far this year that have made siting renewable energy either easier or more challenging, however, have been roughly even, as seen in Figure 17 .
Figure 17: Anticipated deployment impact of enacted bills (Source: Clean Tomorrow, 2025)118Due to the immense restrictions on clean energy siting generated by local and state policies, we believe this is a key area for philanthropic engagement.
Motivation behind siting restrictions: It is challenging to pinpoint the exact cause of growing renewable energy siting restrictions. However, there are lessons we can learn from national political shifts as well as past project opposition.
Nationally, there is a political bifurcation of support for renewable energy. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that in 2020, 65% of Republicans and 91% of Democrats were supportive of expanding renewable energy over expanding exploration and production of fossil fuels. However, in 2025, only 33% of Republicans preferred expanding renewables, while 86% of Democrats still strongly supported expanding renewable energy.119 In other words, since 2020, Republican support for expanding renewables and expanding fossil fuel exploration and consumption has flipped. While this survey does not provide any insights into why Republicans’ views have changed, it does show that renewable energy has now become politicized. This shift in the Republican party could be a reason for the increase of restrictive siting policies recently introduced at the state level, as Republican-led siting bills have been disproportionately restrictive towards renewable energy.120 This shift in politics, however, does not necessarily explain the cause for restrictive local ordinances across the country, especially in predominantly democratic states.
Local opposition to renewable energy projects is complicated, with projects normally facing multiple sources of opposition.121 A recent study, however, found that the most commonly cited challenges across projects are risks to land value and potential environmental impacts.122 These two risks affected roughly 50% of all projects studied.123 The study also found that local opposition normally was not rooted in “disapproval of renewable energy” but rather in concerns of the project, whether factual or perceived. As a result, local opposition to renewable energy may not necessarily be tied to larger political dynamics but instead is rooted in local concerns. Opposition to renewable energy projects will also differ between rural and urban areas. A 2024 Pew Research Center study found that rural residents were more likely to have fewer local benefits while also negatively impacting the landscape, as seen in Figure 18 .124
Figure 18: Perceived impacts of a solar panel farm across different communities (Source: Pew Research Center, 2024)125The challenging political and cultural nature of renewable energy opposition makes solving the siting challenge at the local and state levels difficult. We are uncertain whether these challenges can be resolved quickly; however, we do believe that this is a critical area for philanthropic involvement due to the scale of the issue.
Technology-agnostic reforms: In 2025, state siting bills were only passed in states where a single party held both legislative bodies and the governor’s office (a trifecta), further signalling that siting policies at the state level are a partisan issue. However, in states with at least one Republican legislative body, technology-agnostic siting and permitting policies were closer to passing.126 This suggests that to successfully pass siting reforms in divided governments, policies may have to reform siting for technologies beyond renewable energy technologies, such as fossil fuel technologies.127 This is a strategy of siting policy that philanthropy should further explore to better understand the potential emission benefits tied to improving siting for renewable energy and fossil fuel projects.
Role for philanthropy: Removing and preventing local permitting and siting delaysModernizing the Interconnection Process and Clearing the Backlog Key ideas: Modernizing the interconnection process and clearing the backlogHow interconnection works: To connect an energy project to the grid, developers must undergo an interconnection study process. After selecting a site and finalizing a design, a developer submits a request to an independent system operator (ISO) in regulated markets or to a utility in unregulated markets.128 Once a project requests an interconnection study, the project goes into the “interconnection queue” and will wait for the utility or ISO to conduct an interconnection study.129 This study looks at how the connection of the project may impact the reliability or safety of the grid, but also to see what new transmission or distribution upgrades may be needed to safely interconnect the project onto the grid. Once the study is completed by the ISO or utility, both parties negotiate an interconnection agreement outlining the project’s operating conditions and the costs of connection (Figure 19 ).130
Figure 19: Typical interconnection study process and timeline (Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024)131Guiding this process are interconnection procedures and technical requirements set by a regulatory authority to ensure interconnection studies and the general process meet a high standard.132 The regulatory authority in charge depends on which type of interconnection process a project will go through. For larger projects that connect to the bulk power system (BPS), also referred to as transmission interconnection, the regulatory authority sits at the federal level with FERC. For distributed energy resource (DER) projects which are smaller than 80 megawatts (MW) in size and connect to the distribution and sub-transmission system, also referred to as DER interconnection, the regulatory authority sits at the regional level with public utility commissions (PUCs).133
Challenges with interconnection: While DER and transmission interconnection happen at different levels and are regulated differently, they face similar challenges and can be improved in similar ways.134 However, the greatest challenge to deploying large amounts of clean energy and energy storage sits at the BPS level, and as a result, we discuss these issues in the context of transmission interconnection, but they can be similarly applied to DER interconnection.
The current transmission interconnection queue is backlogged and has become a limiting factor to quick clean energy buildout. As of 2023, there is roughly 2,600 gigawatts (GW) of active capacity in the interconnection queue waiting to be interconnected, and this has been increasing year after year for almost a decade, as seen in Figure 20 .135
Figure 20: Total (cumulative) activity capacity in queues and new (annual) capacity entering the queue (Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024)13695% of the capacity sitting in the interconnection queue is from solar, wind, and energy storage, and is almost double the current installed capacity on the U.S. energy grid.137 The current grid is not physically capable of integrating all of the resources in the interconnection queue, but many of these applications were never fully intended to reach completion.138 Project developers tend to submit multiple applications to see which project will be the lowest cost and most feasible. By submitting multiple applications, they have a greater chance that at least one project will be successful.139 Due in part to this strategy, over 70% of interconnection requests end up being withdrawn, with most happening earlier in the interconnection queue process.140 However, more recently, there has been an increase in projects being withdrawn from the interconnection queue later in the process (Figure 21 ). Additionally, the average time a project stays in the interconnection queue before being withdrawn has been steadily increasing.141
Figure 21: Active, operational, and withdrawn requests and share of withdrawal requests (Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024)142This growing phenomenon points to other challenges causing withdrawals, as pulling a project out of the interconnection queue later in the process is more costly for developers.143 This may not be surprising, however, as the timeline for projects to successfully exit the interconnection queue and be connected onto the grid has been steadily rising as well. For projects that were interconnected in 2023, the median time spent in the queue was roughly five years.144 Meaning that for a project to be interconnected in 2023, it would have had to enter the queue in 2018. Due to this growing interconnection delay, a recent study has found that deployment of solar, wind, and batteries between now and 2027 will be lower than many current models have predicted.145 As a result, we believe this is a high-priority area for philanthropic engagement.
Causes of interconnection challenges: Similar to permitting and siting, interconnection challenges are partly due to policy and regulation challenges that have failed to meet the current state of deployment. As a result, we believe the major challenges laid out below are areas where philanthropy can help drive solutions:
PUCs and utilities are unable to process applications at the rate they are coming in. 146 This has somewhat been improved by the recent FERC Order 2023, which now requires that PUCs and utilities switch from a first-come, first-served study approach to a first-ready, first-served cluster study approach.147 Further solutions to speed up the current backlog of current and future applications, such as automation strategies tied to artificial intelligence or streamlined pathways for certain projects, are needed to reduce inefficiencies.148 Project developers’ have inadequate access to interconnection data. With more and higher-quality data regarding the state of the grid, project developers will be able to more effectively plan projects and interconnection requests based on the grid's room for growth and specific operating restrictions. As a result, developers will also be less likely to blindly submit multiple applications.149 Grid upgrade costs are not equally distributed: As discussed earlier, after conducting an interconnection queue study, a project will be given a list of transmission upgrades that need to be made for the project to safely connect to the grid. The cost of these upgrades is then covered by the project developer. However, these investments in grid infrastructure may benefit other future projects down the road. To make it easier for projects to interconnect and be more fair, there needs to be changes to how transmission upgrade costs are shared among facilities.150 The other challenge with grid upgrades is the availability of transmission lines. The further a project is from a transmission line, the more expensive it will be.151 As a result, transmission and interconnect planning needs to be better interconnected to ensure any future transmission is carefully planned and built efficiently, rather than being built through the interconnection process.152 Current interconnection standards are inadequate for the current fleet of IBR technologies that are sitting in the interconnection queue, such as solar, wind, and batteries.153 As a result, there have been recent IBR performance challenges caused by disturbances to the grid that were never accounted for during the IBR interconnection studies.154 To prevent this, standards need to be updated and modernized to interconnect new resources better and protect the grid.Role for philanthropy: Modernizing the interconnection process and clearing the backlogPrioritizing Philanthropic Levers that Address Barriers to Clean Energy Deployment We applied a version of our scale, feasibility, and funding need framework to decide which sub-strategies to prioritize (Table 2). We excluded funding need due to limited data on available funding. For scale, we took a qualitative approach where we focused on current deployment bottlenecks and considered whether a lever could meaningfully address them. For feasibility, we considered political and technical factors, as well as the potential impact of philanthropic funding.
From our prioritization exercise, we have prioritized the following approaches:
Government engagement and policy development Policy Modeling Research Building diverse alliances Unlike clean firm power and other topics that Giving Green has reviewed in the past, clean energy permitting, siting, and interconnection challenges are all policy and regulatory challenges. As a result, a majority of the philanthropic sub-strategies that we reviewed and prioritized are related to government engagement and policy development. Other philanthropic levers could be targeted to improve the deployment of clean energy; however, these are unrelated to the permitting, siting, or interconnection process. Instead, these levers focus on the technological opportunities to improve conditions for deployment, or even lower the general demand. In the future, we may explore these adjacent levers.
Scale and feasibility of various philanthropic levers that address barriers to clean energy deployment
Federal Permitting
Government engagement and policy development Scale: High. Permitting is a policy challenge, meaning that to solve the inefficiencies of the system and prevent future delays, new policies need to be passed. Government engagement, such as Congressional education to understand the importance of transmission buildout and the debilitating nature of permitting challenges, is crucial to ensuring that policies at the federal level are added to relevant policy vehicles. Additionally, policy thought leadership and development will be critical to guide final policies towards an impactful solution.Feasibility: Medium. While there are political windows under the 119th Congress for federal transmission reform, it is hard to say if they will materialize because of political misalignment. There is bipartisan interest in federal permitting reform, but each party has different priorities, and it is unclear whether a middle ground can be found. However, we believe there are opportunities for philanthropy to support policy efforts and increase the likelihood that an impactful policy is passed.Policy modeling Scale: High. During the policy development process, stakeholder feedback, existing studies, and modeling are normally used to inform the design of the policy. Sometimes a policy’s impact will even be modeled after being designed in an effort to prove its effectiveness. Federal permitting reform, however, will most likely combine multiple policy proposals that span across several different permits and processes, meaning it will be challenging to know the combined impact of the policy package. To understand whether a permitting package is climate positive and worth supporting, modeling will be needed.Feasibility: Medium. In 2024, Senator Manchin and Senator Barrasso proposed the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024 (EPRA), which looked to reform permitting related to clean and fossil fuel energy. Due to the fossil fuel provisions in the bill, several environmental NGOs rallied against it. Despite these provisions, the permitting bill may have been climate positive, as some organizations claimed.155 However, due to a lack of trusted modeling proving so, many advocates dismissed the bill. Trusted modeling and analysis of future permitting proposals may make the difference in attaining the support needed to pass a bill.Local Siting and Permitting
Government engagement and policy development Scale: High. Similar to federal permitting, local siting and permitting issues are policy challenges, meaning improved policies are needed to reverse the restrictive and harmful status quo. While state advocacy does not benefit from the larger scale impact of federal policy, there are key states where greater impact can be achieved because of the feasibility of policy reform and/or because of the amount of potential clean energy that could be built without restrictive policies.Feasibility: Medium. Siting and local permitting are gaining greater attention on both sides of the aisle. While climate-friendly policy may not be feasible in every state, there is the potential to pass improved policies in several states and prevent extreme policies in others. The challenge of local siting and permitting is somewhat fueled, however, by cultural and political tensions, which can make change more difficult, especially at the local government level. Despite this difficulty, we believe there is large room for improvement across the country.Research Scale: High. Local siting and permitting regulations are ever-changing, and there are so many data points to track that it is difficult to know where there are new or growing challenges. As a result, research to continuously understand the evolving local siting and permitting dynamics will help direct advocacy efforts. Additionally, we still do not fully understand how to best counteract opposition to clean energy siting. Further research into successful tactics can help inform NGOs and developers on how to best advocate against restrictive policies.Feasibility: High. Tracking various policy efforts at the local and state levels is challenging, but not impossible. Our understanding is that with additional resources, organizations can continue to conduct these types of studies. Research into best practices, on the other hand, may run into challenges when engaging with developers who have found success, as they may be hesitant to give up their playbook for fear of losing a competitive edge. With that being said, we believe that there is still a lot to be learned and shared to benefit the general clean energy industry.Building new climate grassroots networks Scale: Medium. While siting and permitting challenges are situated at the local level, it will be challenging to build and expand climate grassroots organizations across the country that have impacts in multiple states, let alone counties. As a result, while we acknowledge the effectiveness of grassroots organizations, we believe that building new climate-oriented grassroots networks may not be the most impactful solution as of now.Feasibility: Low. Establishing a new and effective grassroots organization or network that has strong ties to several communities takes time and is very challenging. As a result, this does not seem like a feasible approach to a very timely solution.Building diverse alliances across issue areas Scale: High. There are already many established community-based organizations that may have common ground with clean energy activists regarding restrictive siting ordinances. For example, conservative organizations in favor of individual property rights may be opposed to restricting individuals from installing renewable energy on their land. A study has found that community-based organizations that are not climate-related can play a large role in clean energy projects for other community-related impacts.156 This is further supported by the fact that opposition against clean energy projects tends to be for reasons that impact the local community, not direct opposition to clean energy.157 As a result, we believe that partnerships between technical clean energy organizations and community-based organizations could lead to greater siting impacts by leveraging the knowledge, experience, and networks of both organizations.Feasibility: Non-climate-related groups engaging on clean energy issues is not a new phenomenon, and many potential local and community-based organizations across the country may have aligned interests in removing and preventing restrictive siting ordinances.158 It is not clear, however, how easy it will be to start partnerships and whether there will be a learning curve to joint advocacy. As a result, we tentatively view this strategy as having medium feasibility.Interconnection
Building diverse alliances across issue areas Scale: High. The interconnection queue is managed by regulations set at the federal and regional levels. As a result, future regulations can mandate more efficient and effective practices that can improve the interconnection rate of renewable energy projects. By engaging with these relevant government bodies, NGOs can educate regulatory bodies on existing challenges and propose new policies informed by industry that can remove existing barriers and improve the interconnection process.Feasibility: Medium. The interconnection queue challenge is very apparent to regulators and is of concern. While additional engagement and policy support can lead to better policy designs, it is not clear whether they can help progress timely changes in the face of lengthy regulatory processes.Theory of Change for Philanthropic Engagement To visualize how our prioritized philanthropic sub-strategies would interact with one another and ultimately reduce emissions, we developed a TOC for addressing barriers to clean energy deployment (Figure 22 ). This lays out the different outputs and outcomes we would expect to see to remove barriers and in turn, achieve emission reductions. While this TOC is comprehensive, it is still a simplified and high-level view of how philanthropic action can reduce emissions. There are additional, and in our opinion, less prevalent outputs and outcomes that could lead to emissions reductions, and as a result, are not covered in the TOC graphic.
Figure 22: Theory of change for addressing clean energy deployment barriers63 WRI, 2025
64 “Barriers to deployment, such as siting and permitting challenges, supply-chain constraints, and social acceptance of electricity infrastructure development, could significantly reduce the rate of clean electricity deployment. Evaluation of a stylized suite of concurrently-implemented deployment constraints,4 including more limited renewable resource access, constrained transmission development, and increased costs of CO2 transport and storage infrastructure demonstrated the potential for a 10 percentage point reduction in the clean generation share (relative to the Mid case) and a 24% reduction in cumulative avoided emissions 2023–2030.” NREL, 2023
65 “The outcomes we report throughout Taking Stock this year are subject to considerable uncertainty, including an incredibly dynamic policy environment and persistent non-cost barriers to clean energy deployment. These factors will continue to shape how the energy system and GHG emissions evolve in the coming years” & “renewable resources continue to face many of the same headwinds we identified last year. That interconnection queue—in which 95% of capacity is renewable— is still far too large, with years-long waits for new generators to be able to plug into the grid. In addition to federal permitting slowdowns, persistent local opposition, limited growth in transmission capacity, and inflationary pressures on installation costs all weigh on deployment” Rhodium Group, 2025
66 Rhodium Group, 2025
67 Small scale projects may also need a federal permit, if for example the project receives federal funding or is sited on federal land. Brookings, 2022 , FERC, 2025
68 Brookings, 2022
69 There are additional specific permitting challenges related to technologies such as nuclear and geothermal. These are covered in the clean firm section of the report and are not covered further in the proceeding sections.
70 "The large-scale increase in renewable energy production requires the operation of transmission systems with higher capacities. While renewable energy sources are often concentrated in remote areas, a significant portion of energy consumption occurs in urban areas." Basaran, 2025
71 "To meet the growing demand for electricity, improve electric service reliability and resilience, reduce consumer costs, and enable access to low-cost generation during both normal and emergency operations, there is growing recognition that additional interregional transmission capability and connectivity is necessary" DOE Grid Deployment Office, 2024
72 NREL, 2024
73 U.S. Department of Energy, Grid Deployment Office, 2024
74 Grid Strategies LLC, 2025
75 ibid.
76 RMI, 2024
77 "Siting and permitting infrastructure are always challenging but even more so for a transmission project that crosses multiple states and regions. Not only is there a multitude of potential authorities with jurisdiction to issue needed permits, but each of these authorities may be required to make a separate finding of need for the project to comply with the relevant authorizing statute.” PNNL, 2025
78 Brookings, 2023
79 ibid.
80 Clean Air Task Force, 2024
81 "For many state agencies, however, limited staffing and budgetary resources are constraints that inhibit active participation in transmission planning processes and require careful prioritization between transmission and other energy issues. In addition, because state utility regulators are required to look out for the public interest of their state, they may be reluctant to support interregional transmission solutions where benefits are shared across states in varying degrees, for fear that customers in their state would be subsidizing benefits accruing to customers in other states. This is often referred to as the ‘free rider problem,’ and it’s a consistent concern with interregional transmission projects." PNNL, 2025
82 “A single interstate transmission project may fulfill different needs or deliver different types or levels of benefits to each respective state or to the region overall. The result can be years of protracted siting and permitting proceedings, sometimes resulting in a patchwork of timebound permits along an interregional project’s route" PNNL, 2025
83 Resources for the Future, 2025
84 "A full build-out of the necessary macrogrid is also likely to require enhanced federal or regional permitting authority. Experts have long proposed siting and permitting reforms to address the mismatch between state authority over transmission line siting and the regional and national scope of the nation’s electric grid.[...] We believe that all of these reforms would be a significant improvement over the status quo. They would realign transmission-line-siting authority with both transmission-planning reforms and the need for a national macrogrid to maintain grid reliability." Klass et al, 2022
85 Resources for the Future, 2025
86 This includes planning, operational, financing, and market challenges. PNNL, 2025
87 WRI, 2025 , GridLab, 2024
88 Permits that apply to renewable energy, hydropower, geothermal, nuclear, and all types of projects: U.S. Permitting Dashboard, 2023 &Brookings, 2022
89 Brookings, 2022
90 “Energy projects” includes all forms of energy, including fossil fuels, so this number may be smaller or larger when just considering clean energy projects. McKinsey, 2025
91 Brookings, 2022
92 Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
93 “Reports of 10-year or longer timelines for transmission lines are not uncommon, and both solar and wind projects face long permitting delays. Delays in these projects make it more challenging for the United States to reduce emissions to meet time-bound targets and may cause cost increases or even cancellation of a project entirely as investors and developers lose interest.” Brookings, 2022
94 Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
95 “We identified 32 solar, 16 wind, and 3 geothermal projects completing EIS reviews and 19 solar, 9 wind, and 13 geothermal projects completing EAs over 2010–2023.” Resources for the Future, 2025
96 Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
97 “Geothermal lease nominations for projects proposed on federal surface lands not managed by the BLM must receive approval from the surface land management agency (43 CFR § 3201.10(a)(2)) and complete an environmental review process under NEPA for both the surface land management agency and the BLM (generally in the form of a single NEPA review) before the BLM can conduct a lease sale.51 In practice, this period lasts 1–4 years” DOE, 2019
98 Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
99 New York Times, 2025
100 Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023 &Niskanen Center, 2024 &Adelman et al, 2025
101 “We observe predevelopment litigation on 28% of the projects requiring an environmental impact statement, 89% of which involve a claim of a NEPA violation. The highest litigation rate is in solar energy projects, nearly two-thirds of which are litigated. Other high-litigation sectors include pipelines (50%), transmission lines (31%), and wind energy projects (38%).” Bennon and Wilson, 2023 ; “In federal courts, the grounds for the challenges were based on violation of NEPA and multiple other federal statutes.” Resources for the Future, 2025
102 Institute for Progress, 2024
103 “Although the NEPA process frequently induces agencies to modify project designs or choose alternative means of achieving their goals in ways that reduce environmental damage, the process can be abused by those opposed to agency projects for reasons having nothing to do with their desire to minimize environmental harms. In such cases, project opponents deploy NEPA litigation as an obstructionist tactic” - Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
104 “Defendants prevailed in most cases, but a few court cases caused or contributed to the termination of three projects. Six additional projects experienced significant delays as developers waited for final court approval.”Resources for the Future, 2025 ; “NEPA reviews can create delays and add to the expense of clean energy infrastructure projects, and NEPA litigation has sometimes been prompted by the private interests of litigants that do not necessarily correspond to the broader public interest, suggesting that legislative reforms may be desirable” Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
105 “District courts generally reached a decision within one year; appellate court decisions commonly required at least two additional years.” Resources for the Future, 2025
106 Adelman et al, 2025 ; Center on Regulation and Markets at Brookings, 2023
107 “The U.S. Department of Energy describes renewable energy siting as a series of decision-making processes and actions that determine the location and design of new wind, solar or other clean energy generating facilities. The entities that are involved in these decisions typically issue permits listing the terms and conditions that developers must adhere to for specific projects. As a result, the term “siting and permitting” is commonly used to describe both the decisionmaking processes themselves (siting) and their outcome (a permit or permits).” Regulatory Assistance Project, 2024
108 Clean Tomorrow, 2025 ;Regulatory Assistance Project, 2024
109 “Nearly every state uses a combination of the policies we list below for siting clean energy. Most commonly, a state will have distinct siting approaches for large and small projects. In other cases, a state may have multiple permitting pathways available to local governments or developers, regardless of project size.” Clean Tomorrow, 2025
110 Figure: Siting Policy Frameworks by State, Clean Tomorrow, 2025
111 “each state’s unique political, economic, environmental, and social conditions have shaped distinctive approaches to siting. What works in Texas may not be appropriate for Vermont, highlighting the importance of tailoring siting policies to local circumstances.” Clean Tomorrow, 2025
112 “The June 2025 edition of this report finds that severe restrictions, including outright bans and de facto bans on siting renewable energy facilities, as well as controversies over individual projects, are becoming more prevalent—particularly at the local level.” Eisenson et al, 2025 ; Ordinance - “laws enacted by local governments, typically municipalities. Zoning ordinances allow and restrict various types of projects and may use rules and regulations known as siting standards to manage land use and regulate development and construction of solar and wind projects.” - Regulatory Assistance Project, 2024
113 “The 498 contested projects include 262 projects with a solar component, 212 with a wind component, 26 with a storage component and 16 with a transmission component” Eisenson et al, 2025
114 Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, 2025
115 “Extrapolating setbacks throughout the country can reduce wind and solar resources by up to 87% and 38% (depending on the setback size).” NREL, n.d.
116 Setback ordinance: the distance a renewable energy project can be within of another object, such as a residence or business. Center for Rural Affairs, n.d. ; NREL, 2023
117 “The introduction of a slew of bills to restrict renewable deployment are most common in states that have witnessed the most wind and solar capacity additions over the last decade.5 Legislation to require more local approvals, expand restrictive setback requirements, and increase local control over zoning (see the full list on page 6) were most prevalent in Texas, Oklahoma, Illinois, New York, and Virginia.” Clean Tomorrow, 2025
118 Figure 17: The likely impact of enacted renewable energy siting legislation, by state. Clean Tomorrow, 2025
119 Pew Research, 2025
120 Clean Tomorrow, 2025
121 “We find that it is unusual to have a project delayed, stopped, or canceled in response to only one source of opposition. As illustrated in Fig. 4, over 79 percent of our (larger set of) cases demonstrate more than one source of opposition in play. This suggests that local opposition is often multi-faceted” Susskind et al., 2022
122 Concerns regarding land value normally fall under two buckets: (1) the impact a project may have on the monetary value of private property or (2) the impact a project may have on a lands “religious, cultural, recreational to the potential use of a site for other productive purposes” like farming. Susskind et al., 2022
123 “We found that the most significant sources of opposition derived from concerns about land value (about 62 percent) and environmental impact (about 60 percent). These two affected nearly 50 percent of total generating capacity in our sample” Susskind et al., 2022
124 Pew Research, 2024
125 ibid.
126 “Siting and permitting reforms that benefit all energy technologies, including renewable and non-renewable energy technologies (also known as “all-of-the-above” or “tech-inclusive” policies), were more likely to pass in states with at least one Republican chamber.” Clean Tomorrow, 2025
127 Divided governments refers to states where both political parties hold control of a legislative body or governor's office.
128 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024 &Gorman et al, 2025 .
129 Gorman et al, 2025
130 Valova & Brown, 2022 &Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
131 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
132 Valova & Brown, 2022
133 Slide 6, National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners n.d; DOE, 2025 ; Valova & Brown, 2022
134 DOE, 2025 &DOE, 2024
135 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
136 ibid.
137 There is 1,086 GW of solar, 1,028 GW of storage, and 366 GW of wind capacity in the grid. Current installed capacity is 1,280 GW. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
138 “The current volume of queue requests vastly exceeds the physical availability of interconnections today” Gorman et al 2025.
139 “Entering multiple projects in the queue, even when the developer only plans to construct one project, creates option value as the project with the lowest assigned costs can be kept while others are eventually withdrawn from the queue at low cost. This has been long understood (see, e.g., Gergen et al., 2008). Queue squatting with ghost projects is a way to insure against unexpectedly high network upgrade costs but leads to longer queues and greater uncertainty for all other projects around their ultimate assigned costs.” - MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
140 “The majority (>70%) of interconnection requests are withdrawn. Just 20% of requests (14% of capacity) submitted from 2000-2018 had been built as of the end of 2023” - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
141 “The average duration from interconnection request to withdrawal date has edged upward in recent years” & “This trend implies that some recently withdrawn projects have waited longer in the queues before making the determination to withdraw” - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
142 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
143 “Late-stage withdrawals can be more costly for developers (sunk costs, deposits) and can trigger re-studies for other projects in the queue, increasing delays.” - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
144 “The median duration from interconnection request (IR) to commercial operations date (COD) continues to rise, approaching 5 years for projects completed in 2022-2023” - Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 2024
145 “In the near term (2024–2027), our analysis projects that the annual installation rate will be below the near-term ramp up of installed capacity modeled in leading decarbonization studies” Gorman et al, 2025
146 DOE, 2024
147 The old approach would conduct studies of projects in the order that they came in, which is what incentivized developers to submit multiple applications in slightly different locations or at different times to see if another project’s integration would lower their interconnection costs, as discussed earlier. Now under FERC Order 2023, PUCs and utilities must conduct interconnection studies by grouping projects that are located near each other and that were submitted to the queue during a 45 day window. It also sets more stringent requirements for projects entering the interconnection queue. All in all this could lead to fewer interconnection proposals moving forward and reduce wait times late down the road, but it will not solve the interconnection queue challenge. This approach had already been implemented by some ISOs prior to the FERC Order, and while it can bring improvements, it has some limitations. MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, 2023
148 “Several incremental queue management solutions—from automation and expanded access to fast tracks to more stringent commercial readiness requirements and study timelines—may help reduce queue volumes and interconnection delays in the near term and enable transmission providers to handle larger and variable queue volumes in the longer term” DOE, 2024
149 “...there has been continued concern that inadequate access to information is contributing to high volumes of interconnection requests, high project withdrawal rates, interconnection processing delays, and an overall inequitable system. Improved access to and quality of interconnection data also support other solutions, such as interconnection study automation” DOE, 2024
150 “having the generation facilities that prompt the network upgrades pay the entire cost of upgrades violates FERC’s “beneficiary pays” principle and likely leads to too little investment. Socializing some of these costs to all transmission grid users is a policy meriting greater consideration and is likely to be an important incentive for adding new zero-carbon generation to the grid and so contribute to national plans to green the electrical grid dramatically.” MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, 2023
151 Gorman et al, 2025
152 “Closer alignment in the data inputs, assumptions, and process timelines between interconnection and long-term transmission planning can help ensure that transmission solutions that would have been more efficiently identified in transmission plans are not instead triggered through the interconnection process.” DOE, 2024
153 “To ensure reliable and secure operation of newly interconnecting plants, comprehensive interconnection standards are necessary. Interconnection requirements specifying IBR capabilities and expected project performance remain a work in progress.” DOE, 2024
154 “In recent years, there has been a series of large disturbance events leading to significant IBR disconnection. These performance issues were not identified during interconnection studies of the involved plants.” DOE, 2024
155 RMI, 2024 ; Third Way, 2024
156 Grimley et al, 2022
157 “We find that it is unusual to have a project delayed, stopped, or canceled in response to only one source of opposition. As illustrated in Fig. 4, over 79 percent of our (larger set of) cases demonstrate more than one source of opposition in play. This suggests that local opposition is often multi-faceted” Susskind et al., 2022
158 News from the States, 2024
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