White House Pushes Tech for Faster Use of Permitting Exclusions

The White House on Thursday took another step toward speeding up the environmental permitting process, launching a technology platform meant to help agencies quickly find cases in which time-consuming reviews aren’t necessary.

The new program, known as “CE Works,” is meant to encourage the broader use of categorical exclusions, which are agency findings that a certain type of project doesn’t have a significant effect on the environment. Such low-impact projects usually don’t require agencies to go through the lengthy process of writing an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement.

Because categorical exclusions are scattered across the federal bureaucracy, and in ...