White House issues plan to modernize environmental review, permitting processes

The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), in consultation with the National Energy Dominance Council and relevant permitting agencies, has issued a Permitting Technology Action Plan aimed toward modernizing federal environmental review and permitting processes for infrastructure projects involving roads, bridges, mines, factories, power plants and more.

The Permitting Technology Action Plan provides a governmentwide strategy to optimize technology to effectively and efficiently evaluate environmental permits, allowing for seamless information exchange between agencies, simplified interactions for applicants and greater transparency and predictability on environmental review and permitting schedules for sponsors and stakeholders, according to the agencies.

The Permitting Technology Action Plan contains:

• minimum functional requirements for environmental review and permitting systems;
• an initial National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and permitting data and technology standard;
• a timeline and implementation roadmap for agencies; and
• a governance structure for implementation.

This Permitting Technology Action Plan plays a role in the Trump administration’s ongoing commitment to “expediting and simplifying the environmental review and permitting process. Working with the General Services Administration’s Technology Transformation Services, the CEQ-led Permitting Innovation Center will design and test prototype permitting technology systems to advise federal agencies on the adoption of the best-in-class tools. 

“The Trump administration is working tirelessly to implement innovation-driven environmental review and permitting reforms to eliminate needless delays that cripple the growth of the U.S. economy, replacing outdated technology with efficient, speedier solutions,” says Katherine Scarlett, chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. “Through interagency coordination, this administration has taken bold action to streamline the NEPA process and get America back to building infrastructure projects of all kinds.”

“Under President Trump’s leadership, we will ensure the federal government is maximizing modern technologies to streamline permitting,” says Thomas Shedd, technology transformation services director at the General Services Administration. “Technology Transformation Services remains committed to supporting the execution of the Permitting Technology Action Plan by building the tools agencies can use to accelerate their environmental review and permitting processes, with results in weeks or months, not years.”

The solutions laid out in the Permitting Technology Action Plan will leverage technology to tackle longstanding problems identified in CEQ’s E-NEPA Report to Congress, including reliance on outdated systems, fragmented data management and disconnected digital tools, the CEQ says.