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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit for Permitting and Licensing

The permitting and licensing process for marine energy in the U.S. could take up to 7 years for even small demonstrations or pilot studies despite existing resources like Tethys, MarineCadstre, and the FERC E-Library. The goal of the Marine Energy Environmental Toolkit Project was to increase regulators, developers, and marine energy innovators’ understanding of potential environmental effects of marine energy conversion devices deployments and provide information to make efficient and effective determinations during permitting and licensing; develop a one-stop shop for existing environmental, spatial, regulatory, and scientific data that allows users to access disparate sources of data through a series of tags and spatial queries. The Toolkit (marineenergy.app) builds upon prior U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) investments by pulling from WPTO-funded and outside resources to facilitate the permitting and licensing process, inform technology developers of required permits, and disseminate the latest knowledge of the environmental effects of these devices to regulators, developers, and marine energy innovators and stakeholders.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
DOE OSTI2026

Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) Licensing and Permitting [Slides]

This presentation provides an overview of the licensing, permitting, and regulatory frameworks governing Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) across multiple international contexts. It outlines foundational permitting considerations - including safety standards, siting requirements, regulatory and environmental obligations, and interconnection processes - alongside typical pathways for installation, approval, and inspection. The presentation summarizes key technical standards such as NFPA 855 and IEEE guidelines, and emphasizes best practices for safe and effective deployment. A series of detailed case studies from South Africa, Chile, Mexico, Brazil, Costa Rica, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic illustrates how different countries structure approval authority, evaluate environmental impacts, and integrate BESS into national grid systems. The deck concludes with insights on emerging challenges, including evolving regulatory frameworks, financial viability, and the need for pricing mechanisms that accurately value storage services.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Summary of Analytical Services for the Hanford Site Radionuclide NESHAP Program

This document is a summary of the point source analytical requirements used to demonstrate compliance for the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site operations with 40 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) Part 61, “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants,” (NESHAP) Subpart H, “National Emission Standards for Emissions of Radionuclides Other Than Radon From Department of Energy Facilities,” and the Washington Administrative Code (WAC) 246-247, “Radiation Protection – Air Emissions.” This reference collects information from multiple source documents and is not intended to create, supersede, replace or over-ride any existing contractual, DOE, federal or state statutes, regulations, compliance agreements, orders, permits, licenses or other requirements. The requirement source document governs where any difference may exist. The Hanford Mission Integration Solutions (HMIS) Environmental organization has been contracted by DOE to manage and report data collected from the sampling and monitoring of radioactive air emissions point sources, colloquially called stacks. The Environmental organization coordinates the analyses and reporting of samples collected at various facilities across the Hanford Site. These facilities operate approximately 52 stacks that require sampling, monitoring or estimating radioactive air emissions. The stacks are operated by Bechtel National, Inc. (BNI), Central Plateau Cleanup Company (CPCCo), Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C), Hanford Laboratory Management and Integration (HLMI), and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). Stack samples from CPCCo, HLMI and H2C facilities are collected by the operating contractor staff, delivered to HMIS, and then shipped to an offsite contracted laboratory for analyses. The field and laboratory sample data uploaded into the Sample Management and Analytical Results Tracking (SMART) database are used to calculate sample volumes and concentrations. Sample concentrations are evaluated for compliance with federal and state regulations, permits, and license requirements. The SMART database also calculates total curies released for sampled point sources and stacks. Point source effluent concentrations and releases are published annually in publicly available reports. The BNI and PNNL operate several DOE-Hanford Field Office (HFO) stacks subject to the requirements of 40 CFR 61, Subpart H and WAC 246-247. The concentrations, curies released and dose modeling evaluation for these stacks are included in the DOE-HFO annual radionuclide NESHAP report. The sample collection, analyses and emissions estimates for these stacks are outside the scope of HMIS contracted responsibilities and not addressed further in this document.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2022

Accelerated Materials Deployment in Advanced Nuclear Power Plants

The purpose of this report is to begin the development of a maximally efficient process for licensing and deploying new materials in Advanced Non-Light-Water Reactors (ANLWRs). Some new materials that are to be used in some new plants are seen as possibly introducing risks, because our understanding of those new materials’ behavior in the conditions generated by some novel plant designs is less complete than our understanding of the behavior of materials with long use histories in existing designs. In these cases, an approved code/standard or a code case to support the use of these materials in the novel design’s safety case may not exist for the regulator to utilize as part of the licensing determination. This circumstance creates the potential for an extremely long licensing process for new designs using new materials. The present strategy is to show how to manage these risks proactively, in such a way as to permit licensing decisions to be made in a timely manner, based on this risk management process. The present report outlines the gaps in the current codes to support deployment and use of novel materials and begins the development of the necessary risk management framework that is focused on the subject materials issues; it is based on risk-informed in-service surveillance practices, carried out in such a way as to compensate for current limitations in our state of knowledge. This development will enable licensing and deployment of the subject materials, conditional on the proactive surveillance process to be established. While this report is occasioned by limitations in our knowledge of certain materials issues that may arise in advanced designs, in-service surveillance is always done in order to compensate for a lack of knowledge: if we knew that components were not already failed and not trending toward failure, we would not perform surveillance, even in current-generation plants (except that prescriptive requirements would force us to do so). What is different about the surveillance program discussed here is that the issues are newer and the relevant experience base is less complete, so the surveillance presently contemplated may need to measure new things and/or measure them more often than has been traditional for surveillance coupons. The present report is devoted to the risk management framework and applies American Society of Mechanical Engineers Boiler and Pressure Vessel Code Section XI, Division [1] to establish the structure of a protocol for carrying out the necessary surveillance. These documents are generic: they do not tell us how often to surveille, or what to surveille, or what to measure, but rather how to determine those things, given certain technical inputs. The Regulatory Development R&D Program [2] is currently developing the companion supporting technical basis for the materials surveillance technology that, when completed and validated, can be used by owner/operator and NRC to implement a materials degradation management program for ANLWRs. This report also outlines salient points of discussion, positive potential outcomes, and potential concerns from industry and the USNRC. These aspects of the report intend to inform future work to develop a proposed technical process for adoption by the industry and endorsement by the USNRC to allow developers to propose a risk informed and conservative approach for the use of materials where operating experience/data and codes and standards may not exist for use of a novel material in an operating reactor environment. Additionally, such a technology could be leveraged to potentially reduce part of the upfront materials data requirements from ongoing long-term materials testing so that early action on license application could be undertaken by NRC, in parallel with the continuation of long-term data collection. This could accelerate the schedule for a first-of-a-kind ANLWR deployment or a nth-of-a-kind new materials insertion for established ANLWR designs.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Environmental Impacts of Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower

The goal of this report is to help license applicants, resource agencies, and other members of the hydropower community involved in closed-loop pumped storage hydropower permitting and licensing process, focus the scope of environmental reviews, and more quickly identify impacts with project nexus and potential mitigation measures for these impacts. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) is an energy storage technology that uses energy to pump water up from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir where water is stored until electricity is needed and the water is released to a lower reservoir passing through turbines. Closed-loop PSH—PSH that is not continuously connected to a naturally flowing water feature—is one of the lowest greenhouse gas emitting energy storage technologies and is therefore a critical part of the transition to renewable energy (Simon et al. 2023). Proposals for closed-loop PSH facilities in the United States currently account for more than 40% of original licenses and 99% of potential generation capacity in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower licensing pipeline (Johnson et al. 2023). While closed-loop PSH facilities can have lower environmental impacts than open-loop PSH facilities, no closed-loop facilities have been constructed in the United States to enable direct accounting of project impacts and efficacy of mitigations. Many proposals for closed-loop PSH submitted to FERC are abandoned early in the permitting and licensing process prior to license applications and environmental assessments, so there is little documentation describing potential project impacts and proposed mitigations. The newness of closed-loop PSH proposals in the United States may mean that tribal, federal, and state agencies with authorities for cultural and natural resources protection and management involved in the FERC licensing process may not have experience with closed-loop PSH regulation. Moreover, many proposed closed-loop PSH facilities are in areas that do not have high concentrations of conventional hydropower, so these agencies may also be unfamiliar with the FERC hydropower licensing process. The goal of this report is to help license applicants, resource agencies, and other members of the hydropower community focus the scope of environmental review for the closed-loop PSH development, licensing, and federal authorization process enabling quicker identification of potential impacts, mitigations, and situations where mitigation may not be possible. We found that environmental impacts of closed-loop PSH are highly site-specific, and generalizations about the types of environmental impacts across closed-loop PSH projects are difficult to make. Environmental impacts of closed-loop PSH are like those for open-loop PSH with a few exceptions including water sourcing, which can lead to delays and contention due to potential complexities with water rights, impacts to aquatic resources, and greenhouse gas emission potential. Cultural resource impacts were commonly reported in National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) documents reviewed and discussed in interviews, but in many cases such impacts cannot be mitigated.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pumped Storage Hydropower FAST Commissioning Technical Analysis

This report is designed to address barriers and solutions to modern pumped storage hydropower (PSH) development by establishing baseline project development knowledge, defining key aspects of project development, and identifying opportunities to reduce project timelines, costs, and risks. This report’s scope includes post-licensing activities and excludes factors related to permitting or licensing. The U.S. PSH fleet is composed of 43 projects providing the majority (95%) of utility-scale electricity storage in the US. However, only one new PSH facility has become operational in the past 20 years. Several factors contribute to diminishing PSH growth in the US, including the magnitude of project costs and financing interest during development and construction; the length of time from project investment until project revenue; permitting challenges and construction risks; competition from other storage technologies; and unrecognized energy storage valuation. Although innovative PSH concepts (including underground, small, and modular systems) have been investigated, widespread application has yet to occur. In short, the time, cost, and risk associated with modern PSH development has resulted in limited recent growth in the United States, despite the rising energy storage demand from increased deployment of variable renewable technologies. To address these challenges, the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office initiated the PSH Furthering Advancements to Shorten Time to (FAST) Commissioning project, aimed at catalyzing new solutions, designs, and strategies to accelerate PSH development. This report uses available data from previous license applications, ongoing project cost data, and other global PSH project information based on a typical closed-loop PSH project.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pumped Storage Hydropower FAST Commissioning Technical Analysis

This report was developed in tandem with the Furthering Advancements to Shorten Time (FAST) to Commissioning PSH Challenge and represents the underlying technical analysis that informed the competition. Lead by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the report is designed to address barriers and solutions to PSH development by establishing baseline project development knowledge, defining key aspects of project development, and identifying opportunities to reduce project timelines, costs, and risks. The document’s scope includes post-licensing activities and excludes factors related to permitting or licensing.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS2009

Collaborative Approaches in Developing Environmental and Safety Management Systems for Commercial Space Transportation

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) licenses and permits U.S. commercial space launch and reentry activities, and licenses the operation of non-federal launch and reentry sites. ASTs mission is to ensure the protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during commercial space transportation activities and to encourage, facilitate, and promote U.S. commercial space transportation. AST faces unique challenges of ensuring the protection of public health and safety while facilitating and promoting U.S. commercial space transportation. AST has developed an Environmental Management System (EMS) and a Safety Management System (SMS) to help meet its mission. Although the EMS and SMS were developed independently, the systems share similar elements. Both systems follow a Plan-Do-Act-Check model in identifying potential environmental aspects or public safety hazards, assessing significance in terms of severity and likelihood of occurrence, developing approaches to reduce risk, and verifying that the risk is reduced. This paper will describe the similarities between ASTs EMS and SMS elements and how AST is building a collaborative approach in environmental and safety management to reduce impacts to the environment and risks to the public.

Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)↗
DOE OSTI2020

GCAM-Demeter-LU

This GCAM-Demeter-LU is made available under the Open Data Commons Attribution License:http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/by/1.0/. The dataset includes the projected global gridded land cover (excluding the Antarctic) for the period of 2015-2100 at 0.05-degree resolution and 5-year time step under fifteen SSP-RCP scenarios driven by five GCMs (i.e., gfdl, hadgem, ipsl, miroc, and noresm), using the Global Change Analysis Model (GCAM) and a geospatial downscaling model (Demeter). The data has been stored in self-describing NetCDF format. The dataset also includes the mean and standard deviation of the results driven by the five GCMs. More specifically, the data in each year includes grid-explicit fraction (in percent) of each of the 32 plant functional types that are widely used in current Earth system models. The NetCDF files are named as “GCAM_Demeter_LU_SSP_RCP_Model_Year.nc”, where “SSP” and “RCP” denote the SSP and RCP scenarios, including 'ssp1_rcp26', 'ssp1_rcp45', 'ssp1_rcp60', 'ssp2_rcp26', 'ssp2_rcp45', 'ssp2_rcp60', 'ssp3_rcp45', 'ssp3_rcp60', 'ssp4_rcp26', 'ssp4_rcp45', 'ssp4_rcp60', 'ssp5_rcp26', 'ssp5_rcp45', 'ssp5_rcp60', and 'ssp5_rcp85'. “Year” denotes the year of the land use data, and “GCM” denotes the source driving forcing data from five global climate models (gfdl, hadgem, ipsl, miroc, and noresm), or the mean (“modelmean”) and the standard deviation (“modelstd”) of the results from the five GCMs.See https://github.com/JGCRI/chen_et_al_2020a for details on how to reproduce this data. Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ applies to the metadata files associated with this article

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pumped Storage Hydropower (PSH) FAST Commissioning Prize Technical Analysis

The US energy landscape has undergone major changes over the past 10 years and will continue to see significant changes in future decades as the power grid increases its reliance on variable renewable energy resources. Because of the inherent variability of these resources, renewable energy growth may require additional energy storage capacity to provide flexible load-following capabilities and other grid services that can quickly adjust to changes in energy demand and generation. Pumped storage hydropower (PSH)—one such energy storage technology—uses pumps to convey water from a lower reservoir to an upper reservoir for energy storage and releases water back to the lower reservoir via a powerhouse for hydropower generation. PSH facility pump and generation cycling often follows economic and energy demand conditions. Across the United States, 43 PSH facilities are in operation and 55 projects are in various permitting or licensing stages. Altogether, the 43 operational projects provide the wide majority (95%) of utility-scale electricity storage in the United States. These facilities also provide significant power and nonpower grid benefits, including large-scale electrical system reserve capacity, grid reliability support, and electricity supply-demand balancing through quick-response capabilities and operational flexibility. PSH systems can accomplish these at a scale (e.g., size) and cost that makes these systems highly attractive from a technical standpoint. Although these research concepts are still in their infancy, they demonstrate promising potential as future PSH energy storage technologies. Although PSH has many advantages, development in the United States has effectively stalled since the 1990s, partially because of the magnitude of project costs and financing interest during development and construction, the length of time from project investment until project revenue begins, permitting challenges, construction risks, competition from other storage technologies (e.g., batteries, hydrogen storage), and electricity market evolution and uncertainty. In short, the time, cost, and risk associated with modern PSH development have resulted in limited growth in the United States recently, despite the growing energy storage demand stemming from increased wind and solar power deployment. Technology innovation is needed to help reduce PSH commissioning time, cost, and risk, particularly during the post-licensing phase of project development. To address challenges facing the PSH industry and to improve PSH commissioning timelines, the US Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO) initiated the PSH Furthering Advancements to Shorten Time to (FAST) Commissioning Prize project.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

A Comparison of the Environmental Effects of Open-Loop and Closed-Loop Pumped Storage Hydropower

Pumped storage hydropower (PSH) capabilities are generally characterized as either open-loop or closed-loop. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) defines open-loop PSH as “continuously connected to a naturally flowing water feature,” and closed-loop PSH as “not continuously connected to a naturally flowing water feature.” All the PSH projects constructed in the United States to date are open-loop, so the potential environmental effects of closed-loop systems are not as well documented as the effects of open-loop systems. To address this knowledge gap, the DOE Water Power Technologies Office, under its HydroWIRES Initiative, has prepared this report to: (1) compare the potential environmental effects of open-loop PSH projects with those of closed-loop PSH projects; (2) describe how these effects are being avoided, minimized, or mitigated at existing projects in other countries and proposed projects in the United States; and (3) discuss the relative significance of the environmental issues. The report begins with a brief introduction on the current status of PSH development in the United States. Next, the report describes the current Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) hydropower licensing process, emphasizing some recent regulatory changes that affect closed-loop PSH development. The report then provides a summary comparison of the environmental effects of constructing and operating open-loop and closed-loop PSH systems and discusses the relative significance of those issues. This comparison and discussion are based on the results of a literature review and a review of FERC licensing records. The literature review includes journal articles, technical reports, and presentations on the environmental effects of PSH systems. It includes literature from the United States as well as countries where closed-loop PSH projects have been constructed. The FERC records review examines the FERC licensing record (e.g., National Environmental Policy Act documents and license orders) to identify the environmental effects anticipated and mitigation measures proposed for six of the closed-loop PSH projects currently licensed or permitted in the United States. For comparison, the FERC records review also discusses the environmental effects and mitigation measures for four open-loop PSH projects proposed or currently operating in the United States. The comparison of effects between open-loop and closed-loop projects is relative; that is, it characterizes the impacts of each project type as generally lower or higher than another project type. The comparison reflects general trends among project types because there are sometimes exceptions to the examples cited. The comparison is based on both spatial (location) and temporal (duration) factors and reflects both the severity and likelihood of effects. The report concludes that the environmental effects of closed-loop PSH projects are generally lower (i.e., more localized and of shorter duration) than those of open-loop PSH projects because they are located “off-stream,” minimizing aquatic and terrestrial impacts, and often have greater siting flexibility than open-loop PSH projects. For certain closed-loop project designs, however, impacts to groundwater may be higher relative to open-loop projects and should be considered in any environmental review.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Summary of Analytical Services for the Hanford Site Radionuclide NESHAP Program

This document serves as a summary of the analytical requirements used to demonstrate compliance on the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site to 40 CFR 61, “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants,” (NESHAP) Subpart H, “National Emission Standards for Emissions of Radionuclides Other Than Radon From Department of Energy Facilities,” and WAC 246-247, “Radiation Protection – Air Emissions.” This document is a reference summarizing information from multiple existing requirement source documents and does not create, supersede, replace or over-ride any existing contractual, DOE, federal, state, permit or license requirement. The requirement source documents govern where any differences may exist.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1984

Salton Sea Solar Pond Power Plant Design Study and Regional Applicability

Ormat collected and organized the data base and conducted conceptual plant design, performance, and cost analysis. JPL conducted site-specific studies related to solar pond chemistry, soil biological activity, and dike design and construction. WESTEC conducted environmental investigation studies and performed an environmental assessment. SCE provided planning support for licensing and permitting and technical evaluations of the system design and cost estimate.

R. L. French↗
DOE OSTI2020

Handbook of Marine Hydrokinetic Regulatory Processes

As part of Office’s efforts to advance marine energy technologies and address key issues to innovation, the Office aggregates and disseminates information on permitting and licensing processes used in siting projects.

water, power, blue economy, marine, renewable, reg↗
DOE OSTI2020

Risk Informed, Performance-Based, Technology-Inclusive Regulatory Infrastructure: Technology-Inclusive Determination of Mechanistic Source Terms for Offsite Dose-Related Assessments for Advanced Nuclear Reactor Facilities

This report summarizes a risk informed, performance-based and technology-inclusive approach to determine source terms for dose related assessments at advanced nuclear facilities. This approach uses a graded process which allows both the non-mechanistic source terms calculation methods, which adopt conservative approaches and assumptions based on known physical and chemical principles, and more importantly the mechanistic source term calculation methods, which consider design-specific scenarios and use best estimate models with uncertainty quantification for a range of licensing basis events (LBEs), to be used for the design and licensing of advanced nuclear technologies. The source terms developed with this graded approach, and radionuclide inventories elsewhere in the facility that are determined during source term analysis, can be used to address licensing issues to support the application processes of 10 CFR Part 50 for a construction permit and operating license or 10 CFR Part 52 for a Combined Operating License (COL), Standard Design Certification, Early Site Permit, Standard Design Approval or Manufacturing License. They can also be used for other purposes including equipment environmental qualification, control room habitability analyses, and assessments of severe accident risks in environmental impact statements. There are many advanced reactor concepts being developed including high temperature gas-cooled reactor (HGTR), sodium-cooled fast reactor (SFR), lead-cooled fast reactor (LFR), molten salt reactor (MSR), micro-reactor, etc. The graded approach presented in this report for source terms determination is, to the extent possible, generic to any of these reactor designs and to future reactor designs. This report provides information on the review of the regulatory foundation for use of conservative bounding source terms as well as event-specific mechanistic source terms for advanced nuclear reactor designs.

07 ISOTOPE AND RADIATION SOURCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

An Examination of the Hydropower Licensing and Federal Authorization Process

Site-permitting and regulation are necessary to ensure hydropower projects (both original and relicensed) comply with statutory requirements and address multiple stakeholder priorities that consider a range of factors, including water quality, species protection, cultural resource impacts, and recreation. However, the time involved in acquiring a license for an individual hydropower project can be highly variable by project, leading to increased project costs, financial risks, and uncertainties. In part, this variability is the result of a regulatory structure that has evolved over time to include multiple approvals and compliance requirements administered by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), U.S. Army Corp of Engineers (USACE), federal land management agencies, federal and state resource agencies, and Indian Tribes. Ultimately, the time, benefits, costs, and risks to developers associated with hydropower regulatory processes and/or the preparation (e.g., studies) required for regulatory agency review are not well documented or synthesized in the public domain, which may increase uncertainty and variability within the process. This report addresses these needs by presenting results of a comprehensive examination of hydropower licensing including quantitative and qualitative analyses of timelines, causal factors, and their combined effect on risk and costs to developers.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

PNNL Review of Federal and State Agency Regulatory Streamlining Practices

All major federal actions that have the potential to significantly affect the environment (e.g., land purchases and/or issuing grants, permits, leases, or licenses) are subject to multiple statutes including the following: • an environmental analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) • potential consultations with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and/or National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended (ESA) • potential consultations with State Historical Preservation Officers (SHPOs) and/or tribal nations [often Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs)] under the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (NHPA). Given the size of the federal government and the corresponding variability and complexity in its missions, different branches within the federal government have a fairly wide range of approaches to fulfill their NEPA and consultation requitements. Many of these approaches are founded on the desire to streamline their NEPA and consultation processes while meeting the spirit and letter of the regulations. Some federal and state environmental/engineering agencies have developed web-based dashboards that provide a single web location for permit application submittals. They also use general permits in their various permitting processes. General permits can streamline the permitting process by establishing identical requirements for all eligible applicants. This reduces the time these agencies need to spend reviewing individual permits and setting specific requirements. In addition, general permits do not require a case-specific permit application. This paper presents a sampling of effective agency examples of streamlining the NEPA process and associated agency consultations. It also includes several examples of federal and state agency web portals, online application systems, and general permits that make application processes more efficient and accessible.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

Marine Energy Environmental Permitting and Compliance Costs

Costs to permit Marine Energy projects are poorly understood. In this paper we examine environmental compliance and permitting costs for 19 projects in the U.S., covering the last 2 decades. Guided discussions were conducted with developers over a 3-year period to obtain historical and ongoing project cost data relative to environmental studies (e.g., baseline or pre-project site characterization as well as post-installation effects monitoring), stakeholder outreach, and mitigation, as well as qualitative experience of the permitting process. Data are organized in categories of technology type, permitted capacity, pre- and post-installation, geographic location, and funding types. We also compare our findings with earlier logic models created for the Department of Energy (i.e., Reference Models). Environmental studies most commonly performed were for Fish and Fisheries, Noise, Marine Habitat/Benthic Studies and Marine Mammals. Studies for tidal projects were more expensive than those performed for wave projects and the range of reported project costs tended to be wider than ranges predicted by logic models. For eight projects reporting full project costs, from project start to FERC or USACE permit, the average amount for environmental permitting compliance was 14.6%.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗