Readout of the White House Convening on Accelerating Clean Energy Deployment Through Meaningful Community Engagement
President Biden’s Investing in America agenda is making a once-in-a-generation investment in American infrastructure and our clean energy future, which is creating good-paying and union jobs, growing our economy, strengthening energy security, combating climate change, advancing environmental justice, and helping lower costs for families. To deploy these investments, the Biden-Harris Administration has taken historic actions to accelerate project permitting and environmental reviews – including for key sectors like onshore renewables, transmission, transportation, critical minerals, and offshore wind – with a focus on ensuring strong environmental protections and robust community engagement.
Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) held a White House Convening on Accelerating Clean Energy Deployment Through Meaningful Community Engagement. The event gathered representatives working to promote dialogue, facilitate public input, and increase informed decision making for clean energy deployment and permitting processes, including representatives from federal, state, and local governments, Tribes, the clean energy industry, community groups, academia, and environmental justice, labor, and environmental non-governmental organizations.
This convening focused on how early and meaningful community engagement can advance the Biden-Harris Administration’s work to build our nation’s clean energy future faster and more efficiently, including through CEQ’s new Bipartisan Permitting Reform Implementation Rule and the President’s Permitting Action Plan. Participants from government agencies, community-based organizations, and clean energy developers highlighted success stories and best practices for meaningful community engagement during the development of clean energy and transmission projects, as well as strategies to maximize benefits for workers and communities, and discussed how to scale and build upon them. Community leaders shared insight on how to succeed when engaging communities on clean energy development, and how the engagement process can continue to be improved moving forward. State and federal officials also spoke about actions they have taken to improve community engagement and advance environmental justice.
The Biden-Harris Administration will continue prioritizing meaningful community engagement as we advance efficient and effective permitting processes to build a clean energy future.
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