Solar bill removing red tape in House again

U.S. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is giving his bill on solar power another try, reintroducing it Wednesday in the new session of the House of Representatives.

Rohrabacher’s bill, which he introduced in the last session as well, would let companies skip requirements to complete an environmental impact statement before building solar projects on land controlled by the Bureau of Land Management.

Rohrabacher has criticized the bureau for having a backlog of applications to build such projects, and called current environmental regulations an impediment to clean energy.

“Since the [bureau] has not been able to process these requests in a timely manner, it is imperative that we remove the main bureaucratic impediment to environmentally friendly, domestic, renewable electricity from being developed on these lands,” Rohrabacher said in a statement. “There are businesses with ‘shovel-ready’ projects, that require no federal money, eager to make the necessary investments that not only offer a clean alternative energy source, but creates jobs. They should no longer be inhibited from doing so simply because of bureaucratic red tape.”

— Michael Alexander