Trump’s Environmental Adviser Sees Permitting Plans Taking Shape

The Trump administration is scaling up its overhaul of the federal permitting process, advancing on technological, cultural, and procedural fronts to move faster, according to the White House’s top environmental adviser.

The Council on Environmental Quality’s changes are a core part of President Donald Trump’s economic philosophy, which hinges on the rapid buildout of data centers, energy projects, factories, and mines.

The progress, which has outstripped even Trump’s first term, is due to a pair of recent legal decisions: one that invalidated prior permitting rules on the grounds that the CEQ isn’t a regulatory agency, and another from the US Supreme Court that limits the scope of agency environmental permitting reviews.

The timing of those rulings, one coming at the end of the Biden administration and the other early in Trump’s second term, means “we’ve got three years to really focus,” Katherine Scarlett, CEQ chair, said in an interview. “And that’s something that, in previous terms, we didn’t really get to that step.”

For the last several months, CEQ has been shepherding agencies through rewrites of their internal permitting rules and guidance, with an eye toward prioritizing efficiency and certainty over other policy goals. In September, the council issued a template designed to help agencies draft their rules.

Changing Culture

One hurdle Scarlett is focusing on is helping change the culture within some agencies with training, webinars, and guidance to put staff in a more aggressive posture when making decisions.

“We can sit in DC all day and give direction and policy directives, but unless the folks in the field, across the country, are implementing it as such, we haven’t done our job,” she said.

Broadly, CEQ wants agencies to start each project by looking for ways to move to the fastest possible permitting option, rather than the opposite.

In too many cases, an agency will opt to put a project through the environmental impact statement process—the most complex, slowest type of review—"without really taking a hard look at the project,” Scarlett said. “What are the impacts? Whats the scope of the project? Is there a way that we can do an environmental assessment and get to a finding of no significant impact?”

That approach was reflected in an April 9 guidance document in which CEQ sought to encourage the widest possible use of categorical exclusions—agency findings that a certain type of project doesn’t have a significant effect on the environment.

Scarlett said she shares Trump’s overall goal of promoting more development.

“What success is, is growing the economy, modernizing our infrastructure, building energy projects,” she said. “What’s the impact on the ground? What’s the impact on the American people? Because if we’re not seeing shovels in the ground, I would not measure that as the biggest success.”

Environmentalists have pushed back firmly against the Trump administration’s approach, saying it prioritizes corporate interests over public protection.

Congressional Democrats too have long rejected Republican claims about how many years it takes to get a major project permitted, claiming that most projects move through the process quickly.

In other cases, public interest groups have challenged the legal basis for Trump’s permitting actions. For example, one recent lawsuit argues the Interior Department blew past the environmental review process on the grounds of an energy emergency that doesn’t exist.

Scarlett said CEQ continues to prioritize environmental safeguards.

“I don’t think you can go too fast” in speeding up permitting, “but I do think it’s important to maintain environmental protections,” she said.

Private Sector Solutions

CEQ will also reach out to the private software market this summer, via a formal call for solutions, in search of new tools that can speed up environmental permitting, Scarlett said.

High on the list of demands is case management software to help agencies and project applicants talk to each other in real time during the permitting process, she said. Communication breakdowns are frequently cited as a main reason for permitting delays, as the work gets tied up in bureaucracy across agencies.

“We want to limit the back and forth between the applicant and the agency,” Scarlett said. “I can’t tell you how often I hear from an applicant, ‘An agency’s told me eight different times that my stuff isn’t all there.’ If we can automate some of this, the applicant puts in their stuff and it says, ‘This isn’t complete; we need more before the agency staff even get involved.’ I think that’s going to free up resources and get things moving.”

Other types of software packages could automate permit applications or use AI to do rapid assessments of what kinds of authorizations or permits a project will require, Scarlett said. The Department of Energy has already deployed such a tool, known as PermitAI, which draws on a database of thousands of NEPA documents.

Beyond permitting, Scarlett said CEQ is spending its resources on a range of water-related issues. The council chairs the Ocean Policy Committee, which works on issues such as combating trash and microplastics in the water and finding ways to maximize the economic potential of the US’ oceans.

Relatedly, CEQ is working with the Water Subcabinet, which was created in Trump’s first term, to coordinate work between the Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency on issues such as western water and agriculture.

The council has also been working on hydropower issues such as relicensing hydroelectric facilities, as well as Trump’s Make America Beautiful Again Commission, whose stated goal is to balance economic development with the stewardship of natural resources.