The Trump administration’s plan Wednesday to tap into emergency authorities to fast-track some energy projects drew a mix of industry praise and warnings of legal fights to come.
The move to expedite environmental reviews would only apply to certain projects, such as mining and oil and gas drilling. Wind and solar energy would be excluded, according to the Interior Department.
Interior laid out a strategy for truncating the environmental reviews — an ambitious goal that arrives as the Trump administration fires staff across the federal bureaucracy and offers voluntary buyouts and early retirements.
While the administration’s plan drew immediate praise from industry, including the mining sector, conservation groups and legal experts blasted the directive as an unnecessary attempt to push through energy projects with rushed reviews.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in a statement said the push is a direct response to President Donald Trump’s declaration of an energy emergency in January.
“The United States cannot afford to wait,” Burgum said. “We are cutting through unnecessary delays to fast-track the development of American energy and critical minerals—resources that are essential to our economy, our military readiness, and our global competitiveness.”
The department plans to tap into emergency authorities to fast-track the completion of less-intensive environmental assessments, which can take about a year, to just 14 days. Projects requiring a full environmental impact statement — usually a two-year process that can include complex water quality analyses and a close look at the effects extraction could have on endangered species — will be reviewed in less than a month.
Rich Nolan, president of the National Mining Association, said the department’s effort is critical to bolstering critical mineral projects and supply chains that China currently dominates. He also noted that mine development in the U.S. is among the slowest in the world. It takes about 29 years from a deposit being discovered to actually mining, according to a report from the data analytics firm S&P Global Market Intelligence.
“With this streamlined process, we can better compete with China, advance responsible projects, feed our supply chains with responsibly sourced materials and reliably meet the material and energy demands of modern life,” said Nolan.
Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming also praised Interior’s move on X and blasted what he said is a “disastrous permitting system” coming out of Washington. But House Natural Resources ranking member Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) shot back that Interior’s strategy of limiting National Environmental Policy Act reviews is unworkable and will only create more uncertainty.
“These guys are dreaming,” Huffman said in a statement. “Even if you could do this with federal permits, which you can’t, and even if you could overcome waves of litigation that would ensue, you’re still going to have to navigate state and other permitting. Show me the energy developer that is going to feel confident going forward under this laughable approach.”
Pat Parenteau, an emeritus professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School, said there’s no legal basis for Trump’s “fictional emergency.”
“The nation is in the grip of an outlaw government,” said Parenteau. “The courts are the only thing preventing us from falling into anarchy. And time is running out.”
Randi Spivak, public lands policy director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said the permitting shortcuts outlined by Interior have never been done on a national scale, emphasizing that the emergency fast-tracking is intended for acute situations like natural disasters.
“There is no energy emergency where more fossil fuels are the solution,” she told POLITICO’s E&E News by email. “This is just an excuse to ram through more fracking and mining. We will challenge the basis for this fake emergency.”
Emergency authorities
Interior is planning to apply the truncated review process to projects tied to the production of crude oil, natural gas, critical minerals, uranium, lease condensates, coal, biofuels, geothermal energy, kinetic hydropower and refined petroleum products.
The department also said it will also tap into emergency authorities under existing regulations — the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act — to accelerate reviews and possibly approvals.
Interior, for example, said it will adopt an alternative NEPA compliance process that allows for more concise documents and compressed timelines.
The department also plans to tap into an expedited Section 7 consultation process under the Endangered Species Act, and is directing bureaus to follow alternative procedures for compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act for proposed undertakings responding to the energy emergency.
The process laid out by Interior on Wednesday would whiz through a long-established environmental permitting and study process.
In a letter accompanying the announcement, Interior offered companies a form letter to apply for the emergency processing, which could apply to both projects deemed unlikely to cause environmental damage and those expected to cause ecological harm.
Once an applicant applies, the policy directs agencies to complete all environmental reviews “within approximately 14 days” if a project is “not likely” to cause environmental harm. For those predicted to cause damage, agencies could solicit comments from the public for approximately 10 days, followed by completing an environmental assessment within a month.
By contrast, current NEPA procedures generally offer 45-day comment periods on draft environmental impacts statements followed by 30-day comment periods for final ones.
The directive deletes the requirement of a draft environmental impact statement, instead telling officials to finalize their reviews within the monthlong period.
Spivak said the monthlong reviews would all but guarantee “insufficient, boilerplate” analyses “that paper over any harm to people, wildlife, climate and public lands.”
This story also appears in Climatewire.
