American Electric Power Corp found that they could produce renewable hydro power in rural West Virginia for a few pennies per kWh and sell it in Washington D.C. for about twice that. To do this would require 85 miles of high voltage transmission line to transport the electricity from WV to NOVA. Guess how long it took them to build this?

17 Years. Almost all of which was permitting and licenses. Construction took 11 months.

Meanwhile, when China needed to buy greater volumes of natural gas, they set up a purchase agreement to buy it from Turkmenistan and completed a 2900km pipeline project start to finish in just 22 months.

Obviously, we don't want to ignore civil rights, but it really is absurd that to build anything in this country requires you to retain half the state bar association for the inevitable endless NIMBY lawsuits.