The Biden administration has initiated a series of actions aimed at accelerating the environmental review and permitting process for clean energy and critical infrastructure projects.
Among the initiatives are the implementation of the Permitting Action Plan released in 2022 to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of the federal permitting and environmental review processes and the $1 billion investment from the Inflation Reduction Act to improve permitting.
The White House Council on Environmental Quality has finalized a rule to reform and modernize the federal environmental review process under the National Environmental Policy Act.
Reforms include setting deadlines for agencies to complete environmental reviews and establishing a unified and coordinated federal review process.
The Department of Energy has also released a final transmission permitting reform rule to cut transmission review timeframes in half for complex environmental projects.