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The Department of the Interior, led by Secretary Doug Burgum, published plans on April 23rd to implement emergency permitting procedures that would cut permitting timelines for energy-related projects on federal lands to no more than 28 days.
In a post on X, Secretary Burgum said, “By reducing a multi-year permitting process down to just 28 days, Interior is cutting through unnecessary red tape to fast-track the development of American energy & critical minerals essential to our economy, military readiness, & global competitiveness!”
DOI lays out alternative permitting procedures
In its published statement, DOI specified the permitting speedup would apply to what it called “a wide range of energy sources,” including:
• Crude oil
• Natural gas
• Lease condensates
• Natural gas liquids
• Refined petroleum products
• Uranium
• Coal
• Biofuels
• Geothermal energy
• Kinetic hydropower
• Critical minerals
Notably absent from that list are projects for the installation of new wind and solar industrial sites. It was not clear as of this writing whether these omissions constitute an oversight or an intentional policy decision. If the latter, it would be a departure from the advocacy for an “all of the above” energy expansion philosophy promoted by Trump, Burgum, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright to this point.
“The United States cannot afford to wait,” Secretary Burgum said in the DOI’s published notice. “President Trump has made it clear that our energy security is national security, and these emergency procedures reflect our unwavering commitment to protecting both. 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. By reducing a multi-year permitting process down to just 28 days, the Department will lead with urgency, resolve, and a clear focus on strengthening the nation’s energy independence.”
The notice specifies that DOI will adopt “alternative procedures” designed to allow energy project developers to comply with an array of major environmental laws whose provisions result in the vast majority of permitting delays.
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)—specific to NEPA, DOI will adopt what it calls an “alternative compliance process,” that would radically compress review times for environmental assessments (EA) and full environmental impact statements (EIS) developers must perform to obtain permission to proceed.
DOI review for an EA would now be completed in 14 days’ time, while EIS review would now happen in 28 days. Timelines for either process currently consume one to two years.
Endangered Species Act (ESA)—Related to ESA, Wednesday’s order would implement what it calls an “expedited Section 7 consultation process” under which the appropriate DOI bureau—most often the Bureau of Land Management (BLM)—would notify the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS)—which governs decisions on listings under the ESA—that it is adopting emergency procedures. The appropriate bureau would then proceed with the approval process.
The expedited Section 7 consultation process was developed in conjunction with President Trump’s January 20 Executive Order 14156 declaring a national energy emergency.
National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA): Wednesday’s notice authorizes DOI bureaus to follow alternative procedures for compliance with Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act for proposed undertakings responding to the energy emergency. Those procedures enable the bureaus to invoke alternative compliance process procedures only after providing notice to the "Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, State and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers, and any Indian tribe or Native Hawaiian organization that may attach religious and cultural significance to historic properties likely to be affected by a proposed undertaking and affording them an opportunity to comment within seven days of the notification."
The central permitting conundrum
As I pointed out back in 2022, when then West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin was developing proposed legislation to speed up federal permitting processes, the vast majority of such delays to permitting energy projects are driven by major federal environmentally focused laws like these. Thus, any effort to speed permitting processes would by necessity involve finding ways to do that without diminishing protections for the air, land, water, and threatened and endangered species.
At the time, I called this the “central conundrum of the energy transition,” due to the massive needs for critical energy minerals—and the mining of them—by the chosen alternatives subsidized in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). For any transition away from fossil fuels to succeed would require a rapid expansion of minerals mining and processing in the U.S. Currently, it can take 15 to 20 years from the time a new hard rock mine is proposed until first production is achieved, and that is if you can get the permits issued at all.
Obviously, that situation cannot continue to prevail for wind, solar, and electric vehicles to expand at the pace required to achieve net zero in 2050 or any other year during any of our lifetimes. Thus, the inclusion of critical minerals in the list of projects targets for streamlined permitting is an effort by the Trump/Burgum DOI to compress those lengthy timelines is a nod to this reality.
But Reuters reports that some conflict groups, like the Center for Biological Diversity, immediately weighed in to oppose Wednesday’s announcement.
"These so-called emergency procedures are nothing but grease on the skids for corporate interests to speed approvals that will harm people's health, our public lands and the climate," Randi Spivak, public lands director at CBD, said in a statement.
It is fair to note here that those “corporate interests” mentioned by Ms. Spivak include the interests of corporations engaged in renewable energy, electric vehicles, and the critical minerals mining necessary to make them go.
The bottom line for streamlining permitting
Little has changed since 2022 about this central conundrum related to streamlining permitting. America cannot achieve the Trump goal of true energy dominance while also pursuing anything resembling a real, speedy energy transition without finding ways to dramatically reduce timelines associated with federal permitting.
But the major environmental laws in question are part of America’s social contract: They’ve been developed over half a century amid widespread public approval, and any effort that would involve the diminution of protections supported by existing requirements is likely to be met with equally widespread public disapproval.
Something will have to give here to allow the current permitting stalemate to change. At the moment, none of the stakeholders involved seem willing to budge, making a new round of lawsuits challenging whatever new processes the administration proposes seem inevitable.
This article is also published on Forbes. illuminem Voices is a democratic space presenting the thoughts and opinions of leading Sustainability & Energy writers, their opinions do not necessarily represent those of illuminem.
