A Governor’s Dilemma: The Need to Modernize Washington State’s Clean Energy Permitting Process 

Under the leadership of Governor Jay Inslee, the state of Washington has long provided a model for states across the country seeking to set and meet ambitious climate goals. Through the 2021 Climate Commitment Act, Washington set itself on a path to reducing state-wide emissions 95% by 2050. Meeting this goal will require massively expanding clean energy generation through projects like the Horse Heaven Wind Project, designed to provide more than 1,000 megawatts of clean electricity. However, the state’s cumbersome clean energy siting process caused legal, bureaucratic, and economic challenges for Horse Heaven. This project’s difficult path to permitting raises critical questions about how siting policies balance competing stakeholder interests and the need to rapidly build new clean energy resources.  

This question took center stage throughout 2024 when Washington’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council (EFSEC), the governing body responsible for coordinating evaluation and licensing for siting energy facilities, recommended cutting the proposed Horse Heaven Wind Project in half to protect the endangered ferruginous hawk. Numerous environmental, tribal and rural stakeholders supported EFSEC’s proposal to shrink the Horse Heaven Wind Project over concerns related to wildlife conservation and public engagement processes. Washington’s unique siting policy allowed Governor Jay Inslee to reject EFSEC’s recommendation on grounds that its siting restrictions were too severe, which led to a compromise that ultimately allowed the project to proceed. 

The Governor’s Call for Action 

In his twelve years as Governor, Inslee cemented himself as a climate leader willing to grapple with the complex tradeoffs required by the energy transition. When he rejected EFSEC’s initial recommendation for the Horse Heaven Wind Project, Inslee recognized that this one project was representative of broader challenges to clean energy deployment in his state. In his final decision letter, Inslee emphasized the need for more efficient decision-making in clean energy siting: 

We will not meet our state’s urgent clean energy needs if the path to a final recommendation from the Council spans multiple years. Timely and efficient action by the Council is essential to our mission to mitigate the impacts of climate change and provide adequate green energy alternatives. 

In short, the existing process for siting clean energy projects essential for meeting rapidly growing demand and state clean energy targets is failing to meet the moment. It took Horse Heaven more than three and a half years to receive siting approval from the state.  

Despite the politically contentious and slow permitting process for Horse Heaven, Washington’s siting policy at least provides a forum for balancing competing perspectives on how to meet state-level energy needs. The same can’t be said for all states. 2024 research from Columbia’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law finds that more than 80 precent of states across the country have local laws and regulations that block or delay building clean energy projects with little or no opportunity to consider state-wide energy needs. This data makes clear that clean energy projects face structural obstacles nearly everywhere.  

Modernizing EFSEC  

We should not have to rely on a Governor to weigh in on individual permitting decisions in order for the state to meet its energy policy goals. Hoping to address some of EFSEC’s systemic process challenges, Washington state lawmakers passed House Bill 1216 in 2023. The legislation commissioned a recently released study that calls for significant changes to Washington’s renewable energy permitting process. The study’s authors echoed the Governor’s concerns: 

Permitting in Washington is often too slow and too unpredictable, especially for large renewable generation projects and electric transmission infrastructure that is essential to meet decarbonization goals. Permitting processes are unnecessarily delayed for a number of reasons, but the most important are a lack of specific timelines for completing permitting, lack of clarity about mitigation and other requirements that might arise during permitting, and uncertainty about how many studies and surveys will be required over what time period. 

Along with the study, HB 1216 directs state agencies to develop programmatic environmental impact statements for solar, wind and green hydrogen projects. It also creates a clean energy siting coordination council and directs state agencies to work toward consolidating and coordinating environmental permitting processes. 

More recently, lawmakers have introduced bills—such as SB 5015, SB 5283, and HB 1188—that seek to reduce the EFSEC’s authority or remove the Governor from the permitting process entirely. While these bills are unlikely to pass, they signal growing concern among legislators about how clean energy projects are sited. These recent legislative efforts reflect the tension between accelerating clean energy deployment and balancing local concerns about the environmental and social impacts of siting large-scale renewable projects. It’s a delicate balancing act at the core of meeting society’s growing demands for clean energy. 

What’s Next? 

The Governor’s leadership in revising the Horse Heaven Wind Project’s decision sends a powerful message to other states and governors about the need for swift, decisive action in clean energy siting. With Governor Inslee no longer in office, Washington must take further steps to modernize the EFSEC and streamline the siting process for clean energy projects. The success of Washington’s energy transition should not be dependent on the actions of any single governor. The current EFSEC process is ill-equipped to manage the scale of clean energy development necessary to meet the state’s climate goals, and if left unchanged, it will hinder efforts to reduce emissions and meet the region’s rapidly growing energy needs. While recent legislation is a positive step forward, more action is needed to ensure that Washington fully realizes its potential for clean energy and energy independence. 

The Bigger Picture: Why Siting Matters 

Governor Inslee’s intervention underscores an essential truth: without effective and timely permitting processes, Washington state — and our nation as a whole — will not meet its clean energy goals and supply our insatiable appetite for electricity. There are thousands of other clean energy projects like Horse Heaven awaiting permits to begin construction. Every day that goes by without these projects online is another day without modern, clean sources of electricity powering our economy.  

To help keep states on track, Clean Tomorrow’s Siting Solutions Project is developing policies to help states overcome siting challenges. Our monthly newsletter, The State of Siting, summarizes national trends in siting legislation and highlights bills of particular consequence. In the coming weeks we will release an Insight Report categorizing all the siting policy frameworks in use today, including state examples, citations to statute, and policy considerations. And we’re just getting started. More resources are coming soon.