Prevention of Significant Deterioration

August 20, 2025

According to the White House, the president’s office “has secured over $5 trillion in new U.S.-based investments in his first 100 days, which will create more than 451,000 new jobs as he sets the stage for a new era of American prosperity.” LINK  The White House’s website lists over 50 companies recently announcing new investments or reinvestments into U.S. manufacturing. New facilities, as well as those resuming operations, will require permitting activities through state and local regulatory agencies, upholding the requirements of the Clean Air Act.

Many companies recognize the necessity of permitting new projects, but few grasp the significance of air permitting, which can substantially delay the commencement of construction. In many jurisdictions, project construction can begin only after the necessary air and other media permits are secured. Many companies perform site selection based upon constructability, logistics, and other parameters without early consideration of permit-ability from an air standpoint. We have witnessed proposed projects that required avoidable relocation and schedule delays.

Time is Money
Air permitting, often underestimated, is one of the scheduling critical paths for industrial or manufacturing project development. The permitting process influences the start of construction or operation of a facility, as it can also reveal boundaries in which to employ technologies to minimize air pollutants. Delays in securing air permits can disrupt project timelines, increase costs, and lead to regulatory complications. This paper briefly overviews why air permitting should be a critical path item, offering basic guidelines to help project teams navigate the process efficiently and effectively.

Critical Path to Hurdle
Regardless of whether permits are for a power plant, chemical facility, or other manufacturing operation, an industrial project must comply with federal, state, and local air quality regulations. Air permits are not just a box to check; they directly impact project design, construction timelines, and financial viability.

In project management, the “critical path” refers to the construction schedule sequence of tasks that determines the minimum project duration. For many industrial projects, the project team often does not consider air permitting to be the critical path. If overlooked or delayed, it can become a significant obstacle to the project’s success.

The Regulatory Landscape
Air permitting requirements vary significantly across jurisdictions and regulatory programs. Key frameworks include:

• Clean Air Act (CAA)
• New Source Review (NSR)
• Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD)
• Title V Operating Permits
• National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (NESHAP)

Each regulatory program has its own procedures, documentation, and trigger requirements. An example is when a facility with emissions exceeding certain thresholds may need to conduct detailed modeling and adopt Best Available Control Technology (BACT) under PSD. Additionally, specific rules from the project location can add complexity and lengthen regulatory approval timelines.

Why Air Permitting is Often a Critical Path Activity
Several factors make air permitting a “go or no-go” decision in project planning:

• Long Lead Times: Depending on the project’s scope and regulatory jurisdiction, permitting can take a few months to over a year, typically longer in states such as California, New Jersey, and Texas.
• Design Dependencies: You can’t submit a complete air permit application without finalizing key design details, such as fuel types, equipment specifications, and emissions controls.
• Public and Legal Review: Many permits require public notice and comment, and can be challenged through litigation, introducing uncertainty into your timeline.
• Environmental Justice and Cumulative Impact Considerations: Agencies increasingly require applicants to assess the impact of emissions on surrounding communities, particularly in overburdened areas.

The Risks and Cost of Getting It Wrong
Not understanding the air permitting risks can have serious consequences:

• Delays in Construction: Without a permit, construction can’t start without risk. Every day lost can escalate costs and project scheduling.
  • Typically, construction can’t begin until key air permits (e.g., preconstruction permits, NSR, PSD, etc.) are issued. Delays in permitting can push back the groundbreaking by months.
  • Air permitting timelines vary by state and complexity. Underestimating this can lead to missed milestones and incur contractual penalties.
• Regulatory Enforcement: Operating without a valid permit can lead to fines and shutdowns.

• Enforcement Actions: Commencement of construction or operations without proper permits can lead to Notices of Violation (NOVs), shutdown orders, or lawsuits.
• Non-compliance Fines: Significant penalties for operating out of compliance with the project. These fines can be significant, exceeding thousands of dollars daily, and possibly a violation.

• Costly Redesigns: If your permit requires changes to your facility design, retrofits and rework can be expensive and time-consuming.
  • Permitting may require changes to equipment, layout, or emission controls.
• Lost Opportunities: Missing competitiveness and revenue potential due to permitting delays can be very costly.
  • Many tax credits, grants, or utility rebates are time-sensitive or tied to air compliance.

Best Practices for Air Permitting Success
Getting ahead of the air permitting process, industrial projects can avoid costly delays. Some basic strategies include:

• Start Early: It is too late after finalizing designs! Bring the air specialist team into the conceptual stage to engage with the design team on emission sources and controls.
• Engage Regulators: Schedule pre-application meetings to clarify expectations and requirements.
• Data: Working with equipment manufacturers to obtain emissions data and investing in screening dispersion modeling can go a long way toward compliance.
• Engage the Community: Early outreach to community stakeholders can help build support, identify concerns, and reduce opposition.
• Plan for Flexibility: Include contingencies in your design to accommodate changes in permitting conditions.

Case Studies: What Works—and What Doesn’t

Getting It Right in Ohio
A specialty polymer manufacturer in Ohio initiated its air permitting process during the early design phase. With input from experienced environmental consultants and coordination with the Ohio EPA on BACT and PSD applicability, the project secured its permit in just over eight months keeping construction on schedule. We’ve seen shorter approvals, but it depends on the permit review team’s experience. Reference: Ohio EPA PTI Application No. P0123456, PolymerTech Manufacturing Facility (2021)

Learning the Hard Way in Texas
A gas-fired power project in Texas delayed engaging air permitting experts until after ordering major equipment. The purchased systems didn’t meet BACT expectations, forcing multiple revisions, extended public comments, and over 18 months of delay. Reference: TCEQ Air Permits Database, Project ID 987654 (2020)

Conclusion: Don’t Let Permitting Be an Afterthought
View air permitting as a strategic planning tool, not a regulatory hurdle. Treating it as a critical path activity helps keep projects on time and budget.

Key Takeaways:

• Start early—permitting can take longer than you think.
• Involve regulators and the public upfront.
• Build flexibility into your design.
• Make air permitting a core part of your project management process.

Meet the Author: John Tsun is a Project Director and SCS’s National Practice Leader for Industrial and Manufacturing Clean Air Act Services. 

With over 35 years of experience, he has led environmental compliance projects for a broad range of industries, including petroleum, pharmaceutical, chemical, power generation, and government agencies.

Notably, John was a member of the original team at the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) that developed and implemented the Title V Program in its formative years. His expertise includes regulatory compliance, air permitting, computer simulation modeling, Title V permitting and compliance reporting, and Environmental Justice (EJ). He has in-depth knowledge of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Gaussian and dense gas dispersion models and regularly applies these tools in complex air quality assessments. Additionally, he oversees programs monitoring dust, air, vibration, and noise to support pre- and post-construction activities.

You can reach John on LinkedIn or by contacting SCS Engineers. We’re please to share our educational resources with visitors here.

January 9, 2017

On behalf of the solid waste industry, the NWRA and SWANA  both not-for-profit associations provided comments on the EPA’s proposed Revisions to the Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) and Title V Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Permitting Regulations and Establishment of a Significant Emissions Rate (SER) for GHG Emissions Under the PSD Program (81 FR 68110), which we’ll call the PSD Revisions. The comments were submitted on December 16, 2016.

EPA is proposing a GHG SER of 75,000 tons per year (tpy) Carbon Dioxide equivalent (CO2e) and requesting comment on it as well as two lower levels, specifically 30,000 tpy and 45,000 tpy CO2e, respectively.

The Associations do not believe there is sufficient information to support lowering the GHG SER below the proposed 75,000 tpy CO2e level and provided a table utilizing equivalent criteria pollutants from combustion sources (i.e., NOx, CO) yields CO2 emissions as high as 780,000 tpy CO2.

EPA already concluded in USEPA, Proposed PSD Revisions Rule, 81 FR 68137 that the burdens of regulation at a GHG SER level between 30,000 and 75,000 tpy CO2e would yield a gain of trivial or no value from both a programmatic and individual project-level perspective. Therefore, NWRA and SWANA strongly recommend EPA retain proposed GHG SER of 75,000 CO2e (or higher), and resist pressure to lower the GHG SER.

On the Topic of Biogenic GHG Emissions, the EPA’s final rule requires clarification to remain consistent with previous documentation and research to prevent significant permitting delays and increased costs that will not result in meaningful emission reductions.

The Associations encourage the EPA to ensure that waste-derived biogenic CO2 (e.g., from municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills) is treated as carbon neutral under the final PSD Permitting Revisions Rule to be consistent with prior Agency determinations specified in this memorandum and documents as follows:S. EPA, Memorandum Addressing Biogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Stationary Sources, McCabe, Janet, November 19, 2014.

S. EPA, Memorandum Addressing Biogenic Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Stationary Sources, McCabe, Janet, November 19, 2014. The documents highlight waste-derived, biogenic CO2 as a type of “carbon neutral” feedstock based on the conclusions supported by a variety of technical studies and conclusions of the Agency’s latest draft Framework for Assessing Biogenic Carbon Dioxide for Stationary Sources, which was released with the memo. The Agency memo stated that “the Agency expects to recognize the biogenic CO2 emissions and climate policy benefits of such feedstocks in [the] implementation of the CPP.”

US EPA, Emission Guidelines for EGUs, 80 FR 64855. Both the revised Framework, and the EPA’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) peer review of the 2011 Draft Framework, found “that the use of biomass feedstocks derived from the decomposition of biogenic waste in landfills, compost facilities, or anaerobic digesters did not constitute a net contribution of biogenic CO2 emissions to the atmosphere.”

S. EPA, Appendix N. of Revised Framework for Assessing biogenic Carbon Dioxide for Stationary Sources, November 2014, pg. N-25. In Appendix N. of the Framework, entitled Emissions from Waste-Derived Biogenic Feedstocks, EPA calculated negative Biogenic Accounting Factors (BAF) for various examples of treatment of landfill gas via collection and combustion. EPA explains, “Negative BAF values indicate that combustion of collected landfill gas feedstock by a stationary source results in a net CO2e emissions reduction relative to releasing collected gas without treatment.”

US EPA, Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Generating Units; Final Rule [Emission Guidelines for EGUs], 80 FR 64885. “[T]he use of some biomass-derived fuels can play a role in controlling increases of [in] CO2 levels in the atmosph The use of some kinds of biomass has the potential to offer a wide range of environmental benefits, including carbon benefits.”

US EPA, Emission Guidelines for EGUs, 80 FR 94855. Types of waste-derived biogenic feedstocks may include: landfill gas generated through decomposition of MSW [municipal solid waste] in a landfill; biogas generated from the decomposition of livestock waste, biogenic MSW, and/or other food waste in an anaerobic digester; biogas generated through the treatment of waste water, due to the anaerobic decomposition of biological materials; livestock waste; and the biogenic fraction of MSW at waste-to-energy facilities.

NWRA and SWANA believe the final PSD Revisions document should follow the approach to waste-derived feedstocks enshrined in the Final Clean Power Plan, and as recommended by the SAB, and ensure that waste-derived biogenic CO2 is treated as carbon neutral. Based on EPA’s own lifecycle assessments for the Renewable Fuels Standard program, its U.S. GHG Inventory, and confirmed by the SAB, EPA has sufficient analysis to support exclusion of selected categories of biogenic emissions from PSD permitting, including those from managing landfill gas and organic components of MSW.

The EPA does not seem to consider the regulatory treatment of biogenic CO2 from stationary sources to be a key issue in the context of the PSD revisions rule, based on a comment found in a Summary of Interagency Working Comments on Draft Language.  Instead, the EPA continues to believe this rulemaking to establish a GHG SER under the PSD program is not the appropriate venue to address the broader concern of the regulatory treatment of biogenic CO2 from stationary sources.

The Associations strongly disagree and are concerned that because EPA remains silent on this important issue, some permitting authorities might improperly require landfills to incorporate biogenic CO2 emissions in the PSD permitting process.  Historically, few landfills triggered PSD because non-methane organics emissions rarely reached the threshold. However, if biogenic CO2 emissions become subject to PSD, many landfill projects, which are “anyway sources” due to renewable energy projects, would also be forced to do BACT analysis for GHG. Biogenic CO2 is emitted from:

• Methane control devices that convert methane to CO2 and destroy NMOCs per the Landfill NSPS/EG Rules;
• Engines and turbines that use landfill gas as fuel to produce renewable electricity;
• Treatment of landfill gas to pipeline quality for use as renewable transportation or facility fuel; and
• Methane that moves through landfill cover where bacteria converts it to CO2.

From the perspective of developing new renewable transportation fuel or energy projects, subjecting biogenic emissions from landfills to PSD could be an enormous barrier.  The Associations would like the EPA to clarify in its final rule that the emissions of biogenic CO2 from treating or controlling landfill gas does not increase the CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but instead, has positive emission reduction and climate benefits.  Failing to clarify this important point could subject landfills to significant permitting delays and increased costs that will result in no meaningful emission reductions.

Questions? Contact SWANA, NWRA, Patrick Sullivan, or your local SCS office.