Washington (Platts)--8Oct2009/406 pm EDT/2006 GMT

US government agencies need to step up the permitting process to match the need for renewable power development in the West, advocates of utility-scale solar development said Thursday.

"Anything that takes the government two years to do, I guarantee you, could be done in six months," Roger Ballentine, president of energy and environment consulting company Green Strategies, said during a panel discussion Thursday in Washington.

The comments came as the Bureau of Land Management and other federal agencies are working with the California Energy Commission to streamline environmental review processes in siting federal land for nine utility-scale solar projects in California.

"We need permitting certainty in order to move these projects through the pipeline in a more coordinated fashion," said Melissa Lavinson, senior director of federal affairs at PG&E.

Lavinson said she would like to see government agencies explore the possibilities to "take some stuff out, not in a way that would hurt the environmental integrity of the project."

PG&E has signed a 25-year power purchasing agreements for seven projects totaling 1,310 MW of solar thermal power with BrightSource, a solar developer headquartered in Oakland, California.

BrightSource is working on three interconnected solar units with a combined capacity of 400 MW on federal land. The project, among one of the nine California projects on a fast track, should be completed by the last quarter of 2012.

Permitting is holding up what would otherwise be a faster construction process, others said.

"We can [build] a lot faster than we can [get] a permit," said Ian Copeland, president of renewable and new technology at Bechtel, which is partnering with BrightSource to build and manage the Ivanpah solar project.

--Mu Li, mu_li@platts.com