The White House has issued a Fact Sheet outlining the President's reforms of the federal agency permitting structures that have been used to curtail or postpone energy exploration and development. Specifically, the notice sets out a campaign to reduce the burdens of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) compliance across the federal government and ensure efficient and timely environmental reviews.

The notice emphasizes these reforms of the NEPA review process:

• Implement deadlines and page limits on environmental reviews required under recent amendments to NEPA, in order to expedite infrastructure development and reduce costs.

• Provide clarification that NEPA does not apply to every action that a federal agency takes, but only to federal actions where the agency has sufficient control and discretion to take environmental effects into account.

• Ensure simple and expeditious processes to create categorical exclusions (CEs), adopt other agencies' CEs to minimize repetitive NEPA analyses, and focus their attention on actions with truly significant environmental effects.

This reform efforts was spurred by the January 20, 2025, Executive Order, Unleashing American Energy, which called for unleashing American energy dominance through efficient permitting. The EO directed Council on Economic Quality to provide guidance on implementing NEPA to expedite and simplify the permitting process – and propose rescinding CEQ's regulations. The CEQ responded to President Trump's direction by rescinding its NEPA regulations, creating a path for agencies to expeditiously reform their own NEPA procedures and allow America to build again.