The Trump administration is swiftly moving to reform environmental reviews required by federal law in an effort to expedite permitting and approvals for energy projects, infrastructure upgrades, and more.
Over the weekend, the Council on Environmental Quality submitted an interim final rule titled “Removal of National Environmental Policy Act,” which seemingly would undo all current regulations under the bedrock environmental law. In this form, the rule bypasses the traditional notice and comment period, allowing for it to take immediate effect.
As of Tuesday, the exact text of the rule had yet to be published. However, it comes less than a month after President Donald Trump, through executive order, required the agency to provide new, nonbinding guidance on implementing the National Environmental Policy Act and asked the CEQ to rescind all existing regulations.
Since 1970, the NEPA has required federal agencies to study the environmental impacts of projects such as new transmission lines, highways, or pipelines that require federal permits. Implementation of the law is overseen by the CEQ, which issues guidance and interprets existing regulations.
Critics of the law have long claimed that the NEPA contributes to slower domestic infrastructure development, increased costs, and in some cases, extensive litigation. However, supporters of the law say it is critical to avoid the endangerment of public lands and wildlife and to counter climate change.
For months, the NEPA has remained at the forefront of the permitting reform debate in Washington, with some Republicans insisting accelerated permitting and approval processes cannot come about without eased NEPA regulations.
As Congress still weighs critical permitting reform through legislation, Trump has seemingly taken matters into his own hands to simplify the process.
In the executive order signed on his first day in office, Trump ordered the CEQ to consider pulling back all existing rules and replacing them with nonbinding guidance for agencies to follow and revise.
“When NEPA was originally passed in 1969, it was a five-page law,” Foundation for American Innovation Infrastructure Director Thomas Hochman told the Washington Examiner. “A lot of language was pretty ambiguous and certainly it wasn’t imaged by the people who wrote it as a law that would end up becoming sort of the Magna Carta … of environmental review documents.”
The first change to the law came in 1977, when President Jimmy Carter gave the CEQ the authority to issue regulations related to federally required environmental reviews. This led to CEQ rules being treated as “binding” regulations, Hochman said.
As recently as 2023, under President Joe Biden, the CEQ amended NEPA regulations and certain definitions, requiring further considerations of downstream climate change impacts of projects.
“But CEQ was not given statutory authority to issue these binding regulations,” Hochman said. “It was just given this authority via an executive order.”
Clarification on this authority came in November 2024, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that the CEQ lacked the authority to issue binding regulations under the NEPA. The U.S. District Court for the District of North Dakota came to a similar ruling earlier this month.
Under the interim final rule issued on Sunday, federal agencies will be expected to write new NEPA regulations as it relates to their departments. Hochman said this would not completely cast aside the CEQ, as the agency will continue to issue nonbinding guidance to define the framework agencies can use to be in compliance with the NEPA.
It remains unclear how long it would take for agencies to write and implement new regulations, as they are expected to go through notice and comment periods. Such uncertainty has sparked concern among some, including Jamie Pleune, an associate professor of law and research at the University of Utah. Last year, Pleune testified before a House natural resources subcommittee on research conducted on NEPA decisions.
“Uncertainty causes delay, and it also fuels litigation,” Pleune told the Washington Examiner via email. “One problem with constantly changing regulations is that it creates uncertainty for projects that are trying to comply with a moving target. That uncertainty fuels litigation, which causes additional delays. It is very difficult to operate efficiently in an uncertain regulatory environment.”
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No matter how long it takes, those in favor of permitting reform are confident the rescinding of current regulations will make it easier for both traditional energy and clean energy projects to get online.
“I pretty strongly believe that this is a win for literally everything,” Hochman said. “I mean, it’s a win for our ability to build, and indeed, it’s a win for clean energy deployment, and it’s a win for things like forest protection activities. … It’s not controversial to say that [the NEPA] doesn’t offer subjective environmental protections and it slows down everything. And so I think this is sort of probably extremely positive.”