Lawmakers Back Speedier Dam Licenses for Grid, Climate Goals

Two senators announced Wednesday a fresh legislative effort to speed up hydropower licensing, arguing that looming dam closures threaten power grid reliability and climate goals.

The Community and Hydropower Improvement Act from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and Steve Daines (R-Mont.) proposes the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission establish a two-year process to grant licensing for adding hydropower to qualifying non-powered dams and a three-year process for lower-impact projects. It would direct the commission to establish a two-year licensing process for adding hydropower to non-powered dams, according to a bill summary and bill text shared with Bloomberg Law.

The bill would also extend authority to tribes with treaty-protected rights to submit license recommendations to FERC to protect fish and wildlife resources. It would direct the study of possible benefits that fish passage or downstream environmental improvements may have on fish species and reasonably foreseeable hydrological changes during the license term.

Hydropower licensing changes have been sought for years by a coalition of industry, environmental groups, tribal nations, and others called Uncommon Dialogue.

But that coalition has not, so far, translated into legislative success, with hydropower losing out on the kind of tax incentives and attention received by wind, solar, electric batteries, hydrogen, and other energy technologies, industry representatives said Wednesday at a conference in Washington organized by the National Hydropower Association.

The bill’s proposals dovetailed with hydropower licensing changes also released Wednesday by the White House, which called for shortening timelines for licensing decisions while recognizing tribal authority and protecting the environment.

With permitting reform at the top of the agenda in Washington, hydropower supporters are gearing up to ensure they have a seat at the table, Malcolm Woolf, president and CEO of the National Hydropower Association, said in an interview at the conference.

Licensing Changes

The lawmakers, also speaking at the conference, said licenses to extend the life of dams often get bogged down in unnecessary bureaucratic reviews by a slew of agencies.

About 450 licenses totaling some 17 gigawatts of capacity are scheduled to expire by 2035, Cantwell said, the year the Biden administration wants to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from the US power sector.

On average, the relicensing of hydropower dams takes more than seven years and costs roughly $3.5 million, not counting any capital improvements like fish passages that are required by a renewed license, Cantwell said.

“The reality is, there’s no way we can reach our net-zero emission reduction goals without maintaining our existing hydroelectric generating capacity,” said Cantwell, whose home state sources two-thirds of its power from dams. “We need to say that over and over and over and over again until people in this town who are less familiar with hydro understand that.”

Daines, whose home state gets 40% of its power from dams, characterized the legislation as the “largest commitment to hydro in the last two decades.”

“There will be a lot of press releases on this bill,” Daines said. “But the good news for this group in this room is, I think we’ve got a reasonable shot at an outcome, to actually see something pass.”

‘Years of Effort’

Hydropower provides stability to the power grid as wind and solar stop producing when the sun sets or the wind stops blowing, he said.

“This is the culmination of years of effort,” Woolf said. “This is not the hydropower reform bill any one of those groups would have written—this is the compromise bill all of us are able to get behind.”

Environmental groups and tribes praised the legislation in written statements.

“This is a package of smart, strategic updates to make the process work better for everyone,” said Tom Kiernan, president of American Rivers. “By improving the process for licensing, relicensing, and decommissioning dams, and by restoring autonomy and self-determination to Tribal Nations, we will improve outcomes for rivers, the electric grid, and communities nationwide.”

Mary Pavel, partner at the firm Sonosky, Chambers, Sachse, Endreson & Perry, LLP and former staff director of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, said tribal nations have “unduly borne the burden of hydroelectric power development in this country.”

“This package would give tribes a true seat at the table to ensure that this does not continue to happen,” Pavel said.

Separately, Cantwell said she is reintroducing bipartisan legislation to provide a 30% federal cost share for investments on fish passages and upgrades for safety and water quality improvements. The bill will also provide federal support for removing thousands of obsolete non-power dams and structures that harm river health, Cantwell said.

FERC oversees about 2,500 dams and half of the country’s hydropower generation capacity, with the rest overseen by federal entities.

Last November, the commission approved the largest dam removal project in US history, a massive project hailed as a historic win for environmental and tribal justice.

The PacifiCorp plan to remove four hydropower dams along the Klamath River in Oregon and California was approved two decades after the Klamath Fish Kill, when as many as 70,000 dead salmon washed up along the river, victims of a disease that festers in low water flow conditions.