The White House Releases Action Plan for Federal Permitting and Environmental Reviews

On May 11, 2022, the White House published a “Permitting Action Plan to Rebuild America’s Infrastructure, Accelerate the Clean Energy Transition, Revitalize Communities, and Create Jobs.” The plan centers on five key elements to strengthen federal environmental review and permitting:

(1) accelerating permitting through early cross-agency coordination to appropriately scope reviews, reduce bottlenecks, and use the expertise of sector-specific teams;

(2) establishing clear timeline goals and tracking key project information to improve transparency and accountability, providing increased certainty for project sponsors and the public;

(3) engaging in early and meaningful outreach and communication with Tribal Nations, States, territories, and local communities;

(4) improving agency responsiveness, technical assistance, and support to navigate the environmental review and permitting process effectively and efficiently; and

(5) adequately resourcing agencies and using the environmental review process to improve environmental and community outcomes.

Several of these elements contain climate-specific actions. To help encourage cross-agency coordination, the White House has convened sector-specific teams of efforts for issues related to offshore wind energy and transmission, onshore renewable energy and transmission, production and processing of critical minerals, transportation, and climate-smart infrastructure. Furthermore, to help federal agencies conduct consistent environmental reviews, the action plan provides that the Council on Environmental Quality will establish clear and consistent standards for assessing the climate change impacts of projects.