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Dive Brief:
- President-elect Donald Trump said he will speed up federal permitting and environmental reviews for construction projects worth more than $1 billion. Many infrastructure megaprojects, particularly energy projects, fall into this price range.
- On a December 10 post on your social site of the truthTrump said anyone making a $1 billion investment in the US “will receive fully expedited approvals and permits, including but not limited to all environmental approvals. GET READY TO ROCK!!!”
- Trump’s plan applies to both national and foreign investmentJason Miller, Trump’s senior adviser, told AP News. “If you want to bring money in, he will move heaven and earth to get that money in the door and get it invested in America,” Miller said.
Diving knowledge:
In his first term, Trump took a series of actions to speed up the permitting process for construction projects. In 2020, his administration reduced the number of projects requiring federal review under the National Environmental Policy Act and reduced the scope of effects considered in these reviews. NEPA is a basic environmental protection law, and many permitting requirements derive from it.
President Joe Biden reversed those changes when he took office and focused on categorical exclusions and building agency capacity to fast-track projects.
There is some bipartisan appetite to review building permits. Democrats are eager to fast-track environmental and clean energy projects, some of which have been funded by the Jobs and Infrastructure Investments Act, but have not yet moved forward because of the NEPA process, Alex Etchen, VP of government relations for the Associated General Contractors of America. , Construction Dive said.
“Democrats have taken more interest in this because they want some of these renewable energy projects to get started. They need permits for these transmission lines, and if they want to meet some of their carbon reduction goals, they need to be able to build some of these projects,” Etchen said. “So I think that’s why there’s been this movement of “some on the Democratic side who want to negotiate a compromise on some of these things.”
That said, Republicans will likely wait to push for permit changes until next year, when they control both houses of Congress and the White House, experts told AP News.
In addition, a case that is in the Supreme Court — Seven County Infrastructure Coalition vs. Eagle County — has the potential to dramatically weaken NEPA. This ruling could further enable Trump’s goal of opening up public lands and waters to oil and gas drilling, a focus during his most recent election campaign.
