Net Zero or Better: Priorities for Offset Policies that Benefit the Environment and Communities

The Biden administration has made bold commitments to conserve land and transition to renewable energy, including committing the US power sector to be carbon-free by 2035, a net-zero economy by 2050, and building $1 trillion in new infrastructure. These goals will be difficult to accomplish—or substantially delayed—without stronger policies to pre-identify irreplaceable natural resources that must be avoided, incentivize investment in expanded supplies of offsets, and create more efficient review processes to approve balanced use of those beneficial offsets to permitted harms.

Many federal agencies built offset policies and other mitigation approaches from 1988 through 2016 with a particular emphasis between 2015 and 2016 on enhanced policies for infrastructure permitting and consistency across agencies and laws.

In this paper, we offer detailed recommendations for how the Biden administration can rebuild earlier mitigation policies while creating both better permitting for applicants and stronger ecological outcomes. Beyond those policies, we also offer recommendations that support America the Beautiful, offshore and onshore renewables permitting, and the administration’s other infrastructure initiatives.