The Department of Energy’s loan office will no longer use a bedrock environmental law to assess the projects it finances, DOE staffers told POLITICO’s E&E News.
The move to shelve National Environmental Policy Act reviews was announced at a meeting Wednesday, according to the staffers, who were granted anonymity to discuss the change because they’re not permitted to speak publicly.
“They’re saying the entire department will not be doing NEPA reviews,” one staffer said. “Specifically, the phrase used was ‘We’re not respecting NEPA.’”
NEPA, passed in 1969, requires environmental reviews for development projects, like fossil fuel drilling, hard rock mining, solar and wind farm siting, and transmission line construction. It calls on agencies to “create and maintain conditions under which man and nature can exist in productive harmony.”
