Permitting and the Administrative Path

Permitting and the Administrative Path

LEARN / REINDUSTRIALIZATION

Permitting and the Administrative Path

The administrative path from decision to operation has a duration, and where that duration exceeds the commercial planning horizon it functions as a capacity constraint rather than a procedural step. The statistic most often cited to describe it covers about one percent of the process.

Key points

What the administrative path contains

A large industrial facility typically requires federal environmental review where a federal action is involved, state and local land use approval, air permitting under the Clean Air Act, water discharge authorisation, and an interconnection agreement with the transmission or distribution operator. These are separate processes run by separate authorities under separate statutes.

They also run on separate schedules. A firm that clears environmental review quickly and then waits four years for interconnection has gained nothing on its operating date. Because the processes are sequenced only loosely and coordinated rarely, the binding constraint is whichever finishes last, and it is not always the one that receives attention.

What the NEPA data actually says

The Council on Environmental Quality has compiled data on how long federal agencies take to prepare environmental impact statements, publishing successive reports covering 2010 through 2024 and, in the most recent edition, 1,903 individual statements.

Data4.5 years vs 2.4 years
Two CEQ figures for EIS completion. The 2020 report found an average of 4.5 years from notice of intent to final EIS for statements completed between 2010 and 2018. The 2025 report found a median of 2.4 years for statements completed between 2021 and 2024, with 39 percent finished within two years. Source: Council on Environmental Quality, EIS Timelines reports.

Series and provenance
Agency
Council on Environmental Quality
Program
NEPA implementation
Series
EIS Timelines reports, 2020 and 2025 editions
Measure
Time to complete an environmental impact statement
Units
Years from notice of intent to final EIS
Adjustment
One report gives a mean, the other a median
Period
2010 to 2018 and 2010 to 2024
Latest
4.5 year average for 2010 to 2018; 2.4 year median for 2021 to 2024
Source tier
Primary
Retrieved
August 9, 2026

The mean is affected by outliers including two statements that took 21 and 25 years. CEQ states that the EIS accounts for roughly one percent of environmental analyses conducted under NEPA.

Open the source

Measurement noteThe two figures differ for two reasons at once, and citations rarely separate them. One is average against median. CEQ notes that its average is affected by outliers including two statements that took 21 and 25 years, which a median removes entirely. The other is period: 2010 to 2018 against 2021 to 2024, during which CEQ reports the median fell from 3.1 years to 2.4. A source quoting 4.5 years today is quoting a mean from an earlier period, and a source quoting 2.4 is quoting a median from a later one. Both come from the same agency.

Institute analysisThe more consequential number in CEQ’s own reporting is scope rather than duration. CEQ describes the EIS as the most complex form of environmental review and states that it accounts for roughly one percent of environmental analyses conducted under NEPA. The overwhelming majority of federal actions proceed by categorical exclusion or environmental assessment, which are faster and far less studied. Public argument about permitting delay is conducted almost entirely using the timeline of the one percent.

The interconnection clock

For an industrial facility the grid connection is frequently the longest path. Berkeley Lab reports that the median duration from interconnection request to commercial operation exceeded five years for generation projects built in 2025, against under two years for projects built between 2000 and 2007.

That figure covers generation rather than load, and a factory connects as load. The Interconnection Queue sets out how the process works and what the national datasets exclude, and Transmission and Why It Is Not Built covers what the studies keep identifying as necessary. Load interconnection is administered utility by utility, disclosed inconsistently, and absent from the national datasets, which means the path most relevant to industrial siting is also the one with the least public evidence about its duration.

Why duration behaves as a capacity constraint

A commercial planning horizon is finite. Firms evaluate projects against a period over which demand, technology and financing can be forecast with some confidence, and where the approval path is longer than that horizon the project is not merely delayed. It becomes unevaluable, because the conditions that justify it cannot be forecast that far out.

This is the sense in which permitting duration functions as a capacity constraint rather than an inconvenience. Beyond a certain length, a process does not slow investment. It selects against the categories of investment whose payback assumptions cannot survive the wait, and those tend to be exactly the long-lived capital-intensive facilities that industrial capacity consists of.

Common misconceptions

That NEPA is the permitting timeline. It is one process among several, it applies where a federal action is involved, and its most complex form covers roughly one percent of NEPA analyses. Delays originating in state permitting or interconnection are frequently attributed to it.

That average and median describe the same thing. With outliers of 21 and 25 years in the dataset, the mean and the median answer different questions. Neither is wrong and they support very different arguments.

That shortening one process shortens the project. Where paths run in parallel and one is much longer, compressing a shorter path moves nothing. The operating date is set by the last clock to stop.

What the evidence says, and where it is contested

ContestedHow much of observed project delay is attributable to environmental review is genuinely disputed, and the dispute is partly definitional. One position holds that review timelines are the principal obstacle and cites the multi-year figures. A second holds that reviews often run concurrently with financing, engineering and equipment procurement that would take comparable time regardless, so that the review is visible rather than binding. Distinguishing them requires project-level schedules showing what was actually on the critical path, and those are rarely published.

Related Institute research

Why Reindustrialization Requires More Electricity
The interconnection queue and what it does to siting.

What Does Reindustrialization Cost?
Why time is the cost component that dominates.

What Is Reindustrialization?
Capacity as a system set by its scarcest input.

Sources

Reference entry maintained by the Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology. Figures are drawn from primary sources and cited above. Where the Institute states a position rather than a finding, it is marked as such.

Private Professional Network

Institute for American Manufacturing & Technology

Join the IAMT Network. Connect with researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders working on American manufacturing, energy, and technology policy.

Apply for Membership →