Author: Tula Larsen
Editors: Clara Conry and Darby Osborne
Increasing the manufacturing and speed of permitting non-clean and non-renewable energy sources increases our reliance on resources with a greater carbon footprint, incentivizing the use of non-fossil fuel energy sources.
Due to the Trump Administration’s goals to “Unleash American Energy” and increase American energy competitiveness, targeting American oil and natural gas energy dominance and growth, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) voted to make drastic revisions to the implementation of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Signed into law in 1970, NEPA aimed to evaluate the environmental impact of federal projects by requiring proposed projects to undergo environmental review processes that ensured the risks of environmental harm of projects remained low. It also established the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), an agency of environmental experts that provided executive oversight in ensuring other government agency’s compliance with NEPA. Similar to FERC, the Department of Energy (DOE) made separate and more forceful rollbacks to NEPA procedures, aiming to entirely reform NEPA’s implementation by eliminating key NEPA energy procedures and decreasing environmental impact completion time. Proponents of the policy believe that these rollbacks will streamline the permitting process, making project applications easier to allow for easier and greater project innovation. However, due to NEPA’s success in ensuring the consideration of key environmental impacts of project development, the rollback of NEPA processes is highly controversial.
Furthermore, FERC established a final rule to remove references to rescinded CEQ regulations. The CEQ regulations required federal agencies to complete environmental strategic planning, provided support for cross-agency environmental review collaborations, and eliminated gaps in NEPA litigation. These regulations worked hand-in-hand with NEPA to oversee federal agencies and ensure their success in meeting NEPA requirements.
These rollbacks aim to increase the efficiency of permitting federal energy infrastructure projects. In support of the rollbacks, Federal Energy Secretary Chris Wright argued that the NEPA regulations “brought American energy innovation to a standstill” and created an “era of permitting paralysis”. However, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Interior Secretary Dog Burgnum highlighted the dangers of the NEPA rollbacks, stating that these rollbacks will “shut the public out” of the decision-making processes in project development and will “blind [agencies]” to environmental consequences rather than “[making] them disappear”. In an administration that prioritizes American energy dominance, limited project restrictions, and cutting red tape, protective measures embedded into critical environmental protection legislation now turn into obstacles. Without these measures to protect the land around infrastructure projects, there’s a greater likelihood of approving projects that harm the environment.
Revisions Established By Unleashing American Energy and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act
The Trump Administration’s Executive Order Unleashing American Energy requested that agencies revise their procedures for implementing NEPA. Proceeding closely after the FERC and DOE changes, Congress signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law. The nearly 900-page bill will expedite American energy permitting by adding a fast-track option for project owners. The bill also allows sponsors to pay a fee (125% of the expected Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement preparation cost) to expedite their project’s Environmental Assessment or Environmental Impact Statement review. While this doesn’t change the Environmental Review process itself, decreasing the time taken to consider these projects allows greater room for error in assessing projects’ environmental impact. This may lead to overlooking key information in environmental assessments and an increased approval of projects that are environmentally destructive and unsustainable.
In addition to the dangers of the fast-tracked permitting process, decreasing federal regulations on project permitting also allows individual states to make their own environmental project decisions. While this may have a neutral impact on certain states with extensive environmental review processes, like California, allowing states to make their own environmental regulations enforces a lack of legal clarity on federal-level interpretation of environmental regulations. In the United States’ system of federal legal precedent, this is dangerous for the future of legal environmental interpretation.
NEPA’s Required Processes: The Purpose of An Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Statement
The Environmental Assessment and Environmental Impact Statement review processes are key features of NEPA’s oversight on permitting projects. NEPA requires agencies to provide an Environmental Assessment and, potentially, an Environmental Impact Statement. The Environmental Assessment is a determinant of any major potential environmental effects of a project and if the establishment of possible alternative actions could limit potential environmental risks. If an agency finds a significant environmental impact from the Environmental Assessment, the agency is required to submit an Environmental Impact Statement, which involves public stakeholders in establishing a range of issues and alternatives that lessen negative environmental impacts.
Both processes are aimed to protect existing natural resources and ecological systems around or affected by proposed project site locations, and promote the establishment of specific environmental mitigation strategies for projects. For example, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) requested ecological impact statements for the NOAA oil and gas exploration projects in the Arctic Ocean during the Biden Administration. This NEPA process helps ensure that federally protected marine mammals are not impacted by drilling procedures. It also ensured that the agency gained community input through public scoping meetings to minimize the impact on mammal ecosystems and the communities that depend on them.
Changes to the CEQ
Under the Biden Administration, the CEQ took strides in engaging with federal agencies that implemented NEPA review processes, ensuring that the rules established in NEPA were properly followed by agencies. The CEQ aimed to enhance NEPA’s clarity to increase confidence in following NEPA guidelines, address potential litigation gaps and conflicts embedded in NEPA’s language, and promote consistency across federal agency implementation methods. In engaging with federal and independent agencies, the CEQ required all agencies to submit an Environmental Justice Strategic Plan to the CEQ Chair, and it aimed to enforce a full NEPA environmental review process for federal agencies. Most notably, however, the CEQ provided feedback to agencies on the effectiveness of their individual NEPA implementation efforts.
Today, however, several of the CEQ’s previous requirements were rescinded or made optional. In response to the Trump Administration’s oversight of the CEQ, the CEQ removed NEPA implementing regulations from their requirements, and federal agency compliance with CEQ regulations became voluntary rather than strictly required. In NEPA’s bill language, several CEQ regulations were rescinded, and FERC’s Rules of Practice and Procedure removed all references to the newly-rescinded CEQ requirements. These changes to the CEQ decreases the validity of the CEQ’s oversight and creates gaps in federal agency compliance with NEPA’s rules and regulations.
Conclusion: Impacts on Project Assessment
These NEPA rollbacks may provide benefits to federal energy infrastructure projects, enabling greater efficiency in integrating American energy projects into the electricity grid. These NEPA revisions may increase the number of potential energy project locations, decreasing the time and cost of finding a location for projects. However, the majority of projects of interest are coal, oil, and natural gas projects; these projects, no matter where they’re located or with what resources they use, are environmentally detrimental. Increasing the manufacturing and speed of permitting non-clean and non-renewable energy sources increases our reliance on resources with a greater carbon footprint, incentivizing the use of non-fossil fuel energy sources.
These benefits to permitting also come at the cost of harming NEPA’s primary goal: To consider the environmental and ecological impacts of infrastructure projects. The rollbacks decrease our ability to consider ecological systems, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental justice impacts on disadvantaged communities. These communities may be disproportionately impacted by the expedited environmental review processes and the increase in potential project locations, facing health and safety risks by these projects which may go unaddressed. Surrounding ecosystems may also be adversely affected by a rushed environmental review process.
Examining the lengthy costs and few benefits of the NEPA rollbacks poses questions about our reliance on all energy forms, even clean and renewable energy. This is because adding energy to the grid as efficiently and quickly as possible will not come without increased environmental risks. The risks involved with the NEPA rollbacks serve as a reminder of the importance of environmental consciousness when considering the rollout of energy projects.
Emory Environmental Report 
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