This piece originally appeared at Green Tape.
President Trump has declared American energy dominance a central pillar of his administration. Beyond energy independence, achieving this vision would mean establishing America as the world's preeminent energy producer while creating jobs, lowering electricity costs, and strengthening national security. This goal is laudable – but it will be impossible if the regulatory status quo remains intact. Laws like the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) create multi-year (and sometimes multi-decade) delays, while obstructionists use environmental review as a cudgel to trap developers in endless cycles of litigation. The result is a graveyard of cancelled projects, and of projects that never even broke ground.
There will be several opportunities to reform laws like NEPA over the next few years. In Congress, Republicans may find ways to enact party-line reforms through budget reconciliation, and there will certainly be regular order negotiations in 2026. In the executive branch, President Trump’s rescission of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)’s regulations has created an opportunity for agencies to rewrite the rules of NEPA and reduce the permitting burden.
But there’s no guarantee of what will come out of Congress, and while the rescission of CEQ’s regulations creates an excellent opportunity, it will likely take years for agencies to go through the full notice-and-comment process to remake their procedures.
