An Environmental Case for Permitting Reform

For more than half a century, the National Environmental Policy Act — NEPA — has been the backbone of federal environmental protection in the United States. Enacted in 1970, it was a simple, elegant idea: before federal agencies take actions that could significantly affect the environment, they must pause, study the consequences, consider alternatives, and disclose their findings to the public. When first passed, NEPA was hailed as the Magna Carta of the American environmental movement. For decades, it served as a vital shield, ensuring that federal agencies took a “hard look” at the environmental consequences of highways, dams, and oil pipelines before breaking ground. It empowered communities to voice their concerns and forced the government to consider the long-term health of our ecosystems. But as we navigate the mid-2020s, a profound irony has emerged: the very tool we built to protect our environment has become one of the greatest barriers to saving it from the existential threat of climate change.

In theory, NEPA guaranteed transparency and accountability. In practice, however, the law’s implementation has drifted far from its original purpose. What once functioned as a tool for informed environmental decision-making has become, in many cases, a tangle of bureaucracy, politicization, and unpredictability.

Today, few public policies demonstrate the tension between environmental stewardship and administrative dysfunction more clearly than NEPA. For all the mythology — good and bad — that has grown around it, the truth is simpler: NEPA is not working as it should. Climate change is accelerating, environmental risks are compounding, and communities are suffering the immediate consequences of extreme heat, storms, floods, fires, and drought. Meanwhile, the very infrastructure needed to fight these problems — clean energy projects, grid upgrades, public transit, climate-resilient infrastructure — struggles to move through the labyrinth of environmental reviews. The permitting process now threatens our ability to build the infrastructure required for decarbonization and resilience. This growing acknowledgment is reflected across multiple sectors: transmission developers waiting years just for interconnection studies; renewable energy projects being sued under the same statute meant to protect the environment; and long-planned climate-critical facilities being abandoned because of uncertainty in timing and cost.

Capacity in interconnection queues by energy source as of the end of 2024. [Berkeley Lab]

The data tells a sobering story of delay. On average, it takes nearly five years to complete an Environmental Impact Statement for major infrastructure projects. For green energy projects, these timelines are effectively a death sentence. The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has pointed to grid connection barriers as the primary bottleneck for new power plants, with thousands of gigawatts of clean energy sitting in “interconnection queues” waiting for the transmission lines that NEPA can stall for a decade or more. Even when reviews are finished, the threat of litigation looms large.

Those delays — combined with escalating upgrade costs — stall renewable energy development at precisely the moment when the nation needs to accelerate it. In an era when climate models show that emissions must plunge quickly to avoid catastrophic warming, the United States finds itself unable to build power lines fast enough to connect new wind and solar plants. Once the leader in energy research and development of new technologies, today the United States finds itself falling behind in energy storage and offshore wind production. Mass transit costs two to four times more to build in the United States compared to Europe and Asia. McKinsey & Company recently estimated that permitting delays have reduced mass transit usage in the United States by 130 million rides and increased CO2 emissions by 80–120 million metric tons per year — the equivalent of 17–26 million gas powered vehicles.

NEPA is not the sole cause of this failure, but the complexities and uncertainties of NEPA reviews often amplify the delays, adding layers of time and expense that push projects beyond feasibility. Various groups have celebrated “reductions” in the time it takes to complete an Environmental Impact Statement under NEPA, noting that, in 2024, it took on average 2 years and 2 months to complete an EIS, an improvement from three years, 9 months in 2019. This is not good enough.

Median Completion Time and Percent of EISs Completed in Two Years or Less by Year from 2019 to 2024. [CEQ]

NEPA rightly includes an avenue for judicial review, giving the public the ability to challenge government actions that violate the statute. But over time that mechanism has often been exploited as a weapon to block projects unrelated to environmental harm. Courts have seen lawsuits targeting renewable energy installations, transmission lines, and offshore wind development — projects that are themselves essential to mitigating climate change. These suits frequently fail on the merits, but even unsuccessful litigation can impose years of delay and millions of dollars in costs. The threat of litigation alone encourages agencies to produce needlessly long, hyper-technical reviews not because the law demands it, but because they fear nearly inevitable lawsuits. Researchers studying infrastructure spending have noted that governments often over-prepare environmental documents, layering on studies and analyses out of litigation anxiety rather than environmental necessity. This phenomenon raises costs and slows progress — not in the service of environmental protection, but in dread of court challenges.

Yet outright dismantling NEPA is no solution. A return to the environmental lawlessness of the pre-NEPA era would leave ecosystems unprotected and communities exposed. What the United States needs is reform — not abandonment. NEPA can be restored to its original purpose and adapted to the needs of modern climate policy. But this requires a thoughtful, deliberate approach that neither glorifies the status quo nor replaces environmental scrutiny with reckless deregulation.

Meaningful NEPA reform must begin by restoring climate and cumulative impact analysis as foundational elements of environmental review. Climate change is not a peripheral issue — it is a central determinant of environmental outcomes. Federal actions should be evaluated not only for their immediate consequences, but for their long-term contributions to greenhouse gas emissions, climate vulnerabilities, and community resilience. When agencies fail to consider cumulative impacts, the harms of pollution, ecological loss, and climate instability compound across generations. Proper reform must insist that climate science becomes a routine, required aspect of environmental decision-making. Imposing penalties for filling frivolous lawsuits to stall development would reduce the weaponization of NEPA and minimize the lawsuit risk for meritorious projects.

The first, and most important, action which can be taken to ensure new clean energy projects and infrastructure upgrades can be rapidly and cheaply built is to streamline permitting. Currently, NEPA is only one aspect of the required federal environmental review new projects are subject to. Frequently, new projects must also undergo time-consuming and expensive reviews to ensure compliance with the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and, depending on their location, various marine mammal or migratory-bird protection acts. Additional state and local permits are often also required. Consolidating these reviews into a single federal office would substantially ease the regulatory burden for new projects.

Building a presumption of permissibility into certain projects could also be hugely beneficial to new alternative energy developments and projects to decarbonize the American economy. NEPA timelines should be strictly enforced with projects granted regulatory approval unless their environmental harm can be demonstrated within a reasonable specified set timeframe. NEPA reviews cannot take five years when the nation needs renewable energy, transmission infrastructure, and climate-resilient systems built now. Additionally, the threshold triggering NEPA review should be increased. Under current rules, even small and temporary projects require extensive, costly, and time-consuming permits and environmental review. The United States could also designate certain pro-growth areas where the environmental impact of new projects is deemed minimal and permit requirements are preemptively waived.

We must also confront the reality of “Green NIMBYism.” In many cases, NEPA has been warped into a tool for endless lawsuits used by wealthy landowners to block offshore wind or solar farms because they claim it ruins a view or alters a local landscape. This is not true environmentalism; it is obstructionism that ignores the global stakes. However, in our haste to build, we cannot abandon the communities that have historically borne the brunt of industrial pollution. Reform must be surgical, focusing on shortening the statutes of limitations for filing lawsuits so projects aren’t blindsided years into development, and empowering agencies with more staff to prevent the “hollowed-out agency” trap where reviews take years simply because there is no one to read the paperwork.

The consequences of failing to reform NEPA is not theoretical. They are immediate and visible in the increasingly destructive cascade of climate impacts sweeping the country. Floods devastate communities that lacked resilient infrastructure. Wildfires destroy towns and choke cities with smoke. Extreme heat kills hundreds of Americans every year. Droughts cripple agriculture and threaten water supplies. Climate scientists warn that these disasters will intensify as fossil fuel emissions continue, and they have reaffirmed the scientific consensus that weakening environmental regulation undermines public health and safety. The stakes could not be clearer: failing to renew environmental review in the climate era puts communities at risk and jeopardizes national resilience.

The path forward requires a new “pro-build” environmentalism. To reform NEPA for the climate era is to recognize that protecting the environment and building essential infrastructure are not opposing objectives. They are interdependent. Clean energy projects, transmission lines, public transportation systems, water infrastructure, wildfire mitigation efforts, and climate-resilient construction are all necessary to safeguard the environment. A modern NEPA must facilitate these projects, not hinder them, while still preventing harmful development and ensuring that impacted communities have a voice.

In the end, NEPA should be neither a bureaucratic obstacle nor a political weapon. It should be what Congress intended: a framework for informed, transparent, and scientifically grounded environmental decision-making. Achieving that vision requires reform that strengthens environmental protection while improving efficiency and accountability. A smarter, more coherent NEPA can speed up the infrastructure needed to confront climate change, protect vulnerable communities, and preserve ecosystems for generations to come.

Nicholas Monck is a graduate of the University of Colorado Law School. He also received an Energy, Environmental, and Natural Resources Law and Policy Certificate and a Graduate Renewable Energy Certificate from the University of Colorado. Opinions expressed are his own and do not represent the views of his employer.