Washington (Platts)--23Jun2011/324 pm EDT/1924 GMT

A suite of legislation to streamline environmental reviews for renewable energy projects being pushed by US House of Representatives Republicans could lead to increased litigation and additional project delays, members of the Obama administration warned at a subcommittee hearing Thursday.

The bills would limit environmental reviews of wind, solar, geothermal, biomass and marine renewable projects required under the National Environmental Policy Act, and they would impose tight deadlines for public input and decisions from federal agencies.

Representative Doug Lamborn, a Colorado Republican who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee's Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources, pointed to examples of projects that have been slowed by environmental reviews, such as the Cape Wind project off the coast of Massachusetts.

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"Federal rules, regulations and bureaucratic red tape slow, stall or sometimes directly destroy critical projects," he said.

While Republican sponsors touted the bills as intended to reduce lawsuits and speed projects to approval, administration officials and Democratic committee members said they would have the opposite effect.

The flagship bill, H.R. 2170, from Washington state Republican Doc Hastings, who chairs the House Natural Resources Committee, would block federal agencies and the public from being able to propose alternative project considerations during NEPA analysis. Projects could only be approved as they were proposed, or denied.

"There may be unintended consequences to H.R. 2170," said Mike Pool, deputy director of the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management. "Agencies may be forced to select the no-action alternative if a proposal has resource conflicts that cannot be addressed through alternatives."

Administration witnesses and Democrats on the subcommittee also said that environmental groups, local governments or other stakeholders who would be shut out of the NEPA process would be more likely to go to court to challenge projects.

Two other bills, H.R. 2171 and H.R. 2172, aim to exclude from NEPA review certain testing procedures for geothermal and wind energy projects on public lands.

Pool and Joel Holtrop, deputy chief of the US Forest Service, both said that federal agencies already have discretion to issue categorical exclusions for those types of projects, and often issue such exemptions when those projects do not threaten sensitive environments or cultural sites.

Removing that discretion by applying across-the-board exclusions "could lead to unanticipated resource damage in some cases and increased likelihood of litigation in many more," Holtrop said. "This would ultimately cause further complications and delays in our process and could also increase resistance to efforts to promote renewable energy development."

A fourth bill, H.R. 2713, would streamline permitting for meteorological testing for offshore wind facilities by requiring Interior to establish a testing permit that included a 30-day decision deadline, and exclude the testing from NEPA review.

However, Walter Cruickshank, deputy director of Interior's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management Regulation and Enforcement, told the committee that the bill may create an extra layer of bureaucracy on top of BOEM's existing requirements.

Massachusetts Representative Edward Markey, the ranking Democrat on the Natural Resources Committee, said the bills would result in more lawsuits and fewer projects going forward, and he accused the bills' sponsors of adopting a "Trojan horse" approach to reining in environmental laws under the guise of supporting renewable energy.

"Once they've hobbled environmental laws for renewable energy," Markey said. "They may be hoping it will be a lot easier to do the same for the industry they really care about: the oil and gas industry."

-- Nick Juliano, nicholas_juliano@platts.com