National Environmental Policy Act

As the U.S. expands clean energy and modernizes its infrastructure, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) plays a critical role. Recently, it has become a focal point in policy debates—often misunderstood, mischaracterized, and used as a proxy for larger political battles. While CATF has identified opportunities for efficiency and improvement in the environmental review process, NEPA can support rapid, responsible clean energy deployment while centering communities and the environment.

What is NEPA?

NEPA is a foundational environmental law that has, for more than fifty years, ensured that federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of a proposed major federal action. NEPA does not mandate particular outcomes or standards; instead, it requires federal agencies to consider the reasonably foreseeable environmental impacts of their activities, integrate those considerations into agency decision making, and enhance public transparency in the decision-making process. NEPA reviews are also often integrated with implementation of other bedrock statutes, such as the Endangered Species Act, Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and National Historic Preservation Act.

What is the NEPA process?

The NEPA process is a mandatory decision-making process that requires federal agencies to consider the potential impacts of proposed “major federal actions” before committing resources. Major federal actions are those subject to an agency’s control and responsibility; for clean energy infrastructure projects, when NEPA is triggered, it is often because a project is located on or crosses federal or Tribal trust land or receives federal grants or loans.

For example, if the federal government is considering whether to grant the right-of-way for a new transmission line to cross federal land, which will connect energy projects to the grid, NEPA requires the agency to evaluate how the project might affect local ecosystems, cultural resources, nearby communities, and other resource areas, and document that analysis in an environmental review. Although limited by recent agency changes, the public should then have an opportunity to review and comment on the agency’s analysis before a final decision is made.

NEPA FAQs

Does NEPA cause project delays?

NEPA is often scapegoated as a core cause of infrastructure delays and cancellations. However, arguments that blame NEPA for permitting delays mischaracterize the empirical reality. Where projects are subject to NEPA, evidence shows that NEPA in fact improves environmental decision making and may actually improve overall permitting efficiency by providing a coordination mechanism among federal agencies. Indeed, most delays are the result of factors other than NEPA itself, such as lack of sufficient staffing, budget, and coordination at federal agencies; project-specific elements (e.g., supply chain constraints); and lack of alignment in state and local permitting requirements.

Which energy infrastructure projects are subject to NEPA?

Most solar and onshore wind projects in the United States are not subject to NEPA. One recent study found that less than five percent of onshore wind and solar projects constructed between 2010 and 2021 required a comprehensive environment review under NEPA or a project-specific permit under the Clean Water Act or Endangered Species Act.

Because they are sited in federal waters, all offshore wind projects are subject to NEPA review.

Geothermal projects are overwhelmingly located on federal land, which triggers a NEPA review, and indeed separate NEPA reviews may be required for each phase of development.

Transmission lines sometimes cross federal lands or receive federal funding, with a resulting 26 percent of all new electric transmission line miles from 2010-2020 requiring an environmental impact statement.

Who implements NEPA?

NEPA established the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which oversees the law’s implementation across the government. Each individual federal agency, in consultation with CEQ, has the responsibility to develop its own NEPA procedures. Individual agencies are also responsible for conducting NEPA reviews.

For more than 40 years, CEQ-issued NEPA regulations promoted consistency across the federal government. In early 2025, following an executive order, CEQ rescinded those regulations. Federal agencies soon followed suit, with many rescinding their existing NEPA regulations and replacing them with agency-specific nonbinding procedural guidance. For now, the NEPA landscape is that of a patchwork of differing implementing procedures across agencies.

How can the NEPA process be improved?

CATF research has identified numerous evidence-based ways to improve and streamline permitting and environmental reviews while maintaining public participation and rigorous scientific standards. These include finding new efficiencies in the NEPA process, such as transparent and rigorous consideration of regulatory categorical exclusions, tiering of reviews, and eliminating redundancies. Agencies and developers should also conduct

early, sustained, and meaningful stakeholder engagement, which helps to ensure that projects avoid unnecessary opposition and delays.

Meaningful reform to permitting and environmental review processes will not improve outcomes unless it addresses the challenges caused by leadership gaps, inconsistent and inadequate funding, a lack of sufficient staff with permitting expertise in agency headquarters and field offices, and insufficient coordination among federal agencies. Undermining NEPA will worsen environmental outcomes while bringing us no closer to clean energy deployment at scale.

Key recent NEPA actions

Recent actions across all three branches of government have restricted the scope of NEPA implementation by creating disparate processes, limiting public engagement, and weakening the scientific robustness of reviews. These rollbacks risk:

Reducing community input in decisions that directly affect public health and environment, which erodes trust in the clean energy transition

Increasing litigation risk, which can delay projects

Heightening uncertainty for developers, which increases project timelines and costs

Tracking NEPA-related developments in the Trump administration

January 20, 2025	Executive Order 14154, “Unleashing American Energy,” revokes the 1977 executive order that directed CEQ to issue NEPA regulations to federal agencies for implementing NEPA and directs all relevant agencies to “undertake all available efforts to eliminate all delays within their respective permitting processes”
January 20, 2025	Executive Order 14156, “Declaring a National Energy Emergency,” instructs agencies to use emergency permitting provisions to expedite approvals for a wide range of infrastructure, energy, environmental, and natural resources projects (notably excluding wind and solar)
February 19, 2025	CEQ issues guidance to agencies instructing them to revise or establish agency-specific NEPA implementing procedures that expedite permitting approvals and “prioritize efficiency and certainty over any other policy objectives”
February 25, 2025	CEQ issues an interim final rule removing its NEPA implementing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)
April 11, 2025	CEQ’s interim final rule takes effect; CEQ NEPA implementing regulations are removed from the CFR
April 15, 2025	President Trump issues a presidential memorandum that directs CEQ to (1) issue a Permitting Technology Action Plan for modernizing the technology used for permitting and environmental review processes and (2) establish and lead an interagency Permitting Innovation Center to design and test prototype tools for NEPA reviews and other environmental permits and authorizations
April 23, 2025	The Department of the Interior (DOI) announces emergency permitting procedures for a wide range of energy resources (but not wind or solar) to reduce environmental review timelines to under a month; CEQ writes a letter to DOI concurring that these procedures “are an appropriate means of complying with NEPA’s requirements”
May 1, 2025	The House Committee on Natural Resources releases draft text for reconciliation, including a provision by which project sponsors can pay 125% the cost of an environmental review in exchange for an agency deadline and no judicial review
May 22, 2025	The House of Representatives passes the reconciliation bill, including the pay-to-play permitting provisions
May 23, 2025	DOI uses emergency permitting procedures for the first time, approving the Utah Velvet-Wood uranium and vanadium mine in 14 days
May 29, 2025	The Supreme Court decides, in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado, that agencies may limit their reviews to matters within the scope of the agency’s decisional authority and that courts should broadly defer to agencies in determining this scope
May 30, 2025	CEQ releases the Permitting Technology Action Plan
June 4, 2025	The Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works releases draft reconciliation text, which retains the House version’s pay-to-play permitting provisions and rescinds permitting funds to several agencies
June 5, 2025	CEQ launches the Categorical Exclusion Explorer, a technology tool that provides a digitized public database of each federal agency’s existing categorical exclusions established under NEPA
June 19, 2025	The Senate parliamentarian advises that the portion of the pay-to-play permitting provision that would eliminate judicial review is not allowable under the Senate’s Byrd Rule and would therefore have to be passed by a 60-vote majority
July 1, 2025	The Senate passes the reconciliation bill (51–50), including the provision that project sponsors can pay 125% the cost of an environmental review in exchange for an agency deadline; however, such an expedited review is still subject to judicial review
July 3, 2025	The House passes the Senate version of the reconciliation bill (218–214) without changes
July 3, 2025	The Department of Energy, Department of the Interior, Department of Agriculture, Army Corps of Engineers, Department of Transportation, and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission introduce rules for their NEPA implementing procedures, which vary by agency and generally (though not exclusively) rescind their existing regulations and convert them to nonbinding, changeable procedural guidance
July 4, 2025	President Trump signs the reconciliation bill into law
July 22, 2025	The House Committee on Natural Resources holds an oversight hearing titled “Permitting Purgatory: Restoring Common Sense to NEPA Reviews”
July 23, 2025	The White House releases an AI Action Plan and President Trump signs an executive order on AI data center infrastructure. Both documents contain several provisions aimed at restraining NEPA and accelerating data center permitting; the executive order directs agencies to establish new categorical exclusions for AI data center infrastructure and declares that federal funding that makes up less than 50 percent of total project costs are presumed exempt from NEPA
July 25, 2025	Reps. Bruce Westerman (R-AR), Chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Jared Golden (D-ME) introduce the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act. The SPEED Act would: sharply restrict the judicial review of NEPA reviews; exclude from NEPA all projects that only receive federal funds or loans, or that have received a functionally equivalent review at the state or Tribal level; and limit the consideration of new scientific information after the early stages of the NEPA process, among other changes.
September 10, 2025	The House Committee on Natural Resources holds a hearing on the SPEED Act; the ePermit Act, which would establish requirements related to digitizing environmental reviews; and the Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act, which would direct CEQ to produce an annual report on projects that require NEPA review
September 29, 2025	CEQ issues guidance to agencies on NEPA implementation that updates and replaces the guidance issued in February, along with an associated agency implementing procedures template.
November 20, 2025	The House Committee on Natural Resources marks up eight bills, including the SPEED Act, ePermit Act, and Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act, all of which pass out of committee (the SPEED Act with all Republicans and two Democrats in favor, the latter two bills unanimously). A unanimously agreed-upon amendment to the SPEED Act contains a provision intended to promote permit certainty for already-issued permits
December 9-10, 2025	The ePermit Act and the Studying NEPA’s Impact on Projects Act pass the House of Representatives by unanimous voice vote. The bills are referred to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
December 15-17, 2025	During consideration in the House Committee on Rules, Rep. Harris, chair of the House Freedom Caucus, offers a successful amendment restricting the permit certainty language to not apply retroactively to actions taken between January 20, 2025 and the enactment of the bill. The American Clean Power Association, a trade group for the clean energy industry which had previously endorsed the bill, pulls its support due to Rep. Harris’s amendment
December 18, 2025	The SPEED Act passes the House of Representatives 221-196, largely on party lines, with eleven Democrats supporting and one Republican opposing. The bill is referred to the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee
December 22, 2025	The Department of the Interior issues a stop work order for five offshore wind projects that had received all approvals and begun construction. One project, Vineyard Wind 1, was already sending power to the grid. In response, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), the Ranking Member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, and Senator Martin Heinrich (D-NM), the Ranking Member of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, issue a statement saying “The illegal attacks on fully permitted renewable energy projects must be reversed if there is to be any chance that permitting talks resume. There is no path to permitting reform if this administration refuses to follow the law”
January 8, 2026	CEQ adopts as final its February interim rule removing its NEPA regulations from the Federal Register, making no changes