The bill, introduced by Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) and backed by Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), passed the House Thursday in a 221-196 vote, in which 11 Democrats joined Republican lawmakers to back the reform effort. It now heads to the Senate, where it has critics and proponents on both sides of the aisle, making its prospects uncertain.<\/p>\n
The bill seeks to reform foundational environmental regulations that govern how major government projects are assessed and approved by amending the landmark 1970 National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), signed into law under the Nixon administration. NEPA requires federal agencies to review and disclose the environmental impacts of major projects before permitting or funding them. Although NEPA reviews are only one component of the federal permitting process, advocates argue that they serve a crucial role by providing both the government and the public the chance to examine the knock-on effects that major projects could have on the environment.<\/p>\n
Critics of the law have argued for years that increasingly complex reviews\u2014along with legal wrangling over the findings of those reviews\u2014have turned NEPA into a source of significant, burdensome delays that threaten the feasibility of major projects, such as power plants, transmission lines and wind and solar projects on federal land.<\/p>\n
Speaking on the floor of the House Thursday before the vote, Westerman described the SPEED Act as a way to \u201crestore common sense and accountability to federal permitting.\u201d Westerman praised the original intent of NEPA, but said the law\u2019s intended environmental protections had been overshadowed by NEPA becoming \u201cmore synonymous with red tape and waste.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat was meant to facilitate responsible development has been twisted into a bureaucratic bottleneck that delays investments in the infrastructure and technologies that make our country run,\u201d Westerman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After the bill\u2019s passage through the House on Thursday, the SPEED Act\u2019s Democratic cosponsor, Golden, praised the bill\u2019s success.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe simplest way to make energy, housing, and other essentials more affordable is to make it possible to actually produce enough of it at a reasonable cost,\u201d Golden said in a press release following the vote. \u201cThe SPEED Act has united workers, businesses, and political forces who usually oppose each other because scarcity hurts everyone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
According to an issue brief<\/a> from the Bipartisan Policy Center, the bill aims to reform the NEPA process in several key ways. First, it makes changes to the ways agencies comply with NEPA\u2014for example, by creating exemptions to when a NEPA review is required, and requiring agencies to only consider environmental impacts that are directly tied to the project at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n It would also drastically shorten the deadline to sue a federal agency over its permitting decision and constrain who is eligible to file suit. Current law provides a six-year statute of limitations on agency decisions for permitting energy infrastructure, and two years for transportation project permits. Under the SPEED Act\u2019s provisions, those deadlines would be shortened to a mere 150 days and only allow lawsuits to be filed by plaintiffs who demonstrated in public comment periods that they would be directly and negatively impacted by the project.<\/p>\n NEPA does not require the government to make particular decisions about whether or how to move forward with a project based on a review\u2019s findings. However, critics argue<\/a> that in the decades since its passage, interest groups have \u201cweaponized\u201d the NEPA process to delay or even doom projects they oppose, sometimes forcing agencies to conduct additional analyses that add costly delays to project timelines.<\/p>\n Strange Bedfellows on Either Side of the Bill\u00a0<\/p>\n Although climate activists and environmental groups have used NEPA to oppose fossil fuel projects, such as the Keystone XL<\/a> and Dakota Access<\/a> pipelines, oil and gas interests are far from the only group seeking respite. Some voices within the clean energy industry have called for permitting reform too, arguing that delays stemming from the current permitting process have had a negative impact on America\u2019s ability to build out more climate-friendly projects, including some offshore wind<\/a> projects and transmission lines<\/a> to connect renewables to the grid.<\/p>\n So when Westerman and Golden introduced the SPEED Act in the House, a hodgepodge of odd alliances and opposition groups formed in response.<\/p>\n The American Petroleum Institute, a trade association for the oil and gas industry, launched a seven-figure advertising campaign in recent months pushing lawmakers to pursue permitting reform, according to a report<\/a> from Axios. And the bill also initially enjoyed support from voices within the clean power industry. However, last-minute changes to the bill\u2014designed to win over Republican holdouts\u2014undermined the SPEED Act\u2019s cross-sector support.<\/p>\n The bill\u2019s opponents had previously raised alarm bells that fossil fuel interests would disproportionately benefit from a more streamlined review process under the current administration, citing President Donald Trump\u2019s ongoing war against wind and solar energy projects.<\/p>\n In recent months, the Trump administration has sought to pause, reconsider or revoke already approved permits for renewable energy projects it dislikes. Those moves particularly impacted offshore wind developments and added significant uncertainty to the feasibility of clean energy investments as a whole.<\/p>\n A bipartisan amendment to the SPEED Act, added during the Natural Resources Committee\u2019s markup in November, sought to address some of those concerns by adding language that would make it more difficult for the administration to \u201crevoke, rescind, withdraw, terminate, suspend, amend, alter, or take any other action to interfere\u201d with an existing authorization.<\/p>\n However, that measure encountered resistance from key Republican voices who support Trump\u2019s attacks on offshore wind projects.<\/p>\n A Last-Minute Loophole for Trump\u2019s Energy Agenda<\/p>\n On Tuesday, Republican lawmakers in the Rules Committee were able to amend the SPEED Act in a way that would facilitate the Trump administration\u2019s ongoing efforts to axe renewable energy projects. The changes were spearheaded by Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Jeff Van Drew (R-N.J.), two vocal proponents of Trump\u2019s energy policies. The amendment fundamentally undermined the technology-neutral aspirations of the bill\u2014and any hope of receiving widespread support from moderate Democrats or the clean power industry.<\/p>\n According to Matthew Davis, vice president of federal policy at the League of Conservation Voters, Harris and Van Drew\u2019s amendment would allow the administration to exclude any project from the bill\u2019s reforms that the Trump administration had flagged for reconsideration\u2014something the administration has done repeatedly for renewable projects like offshore wind.<\/p>\n The result, Davis argued, is that the bill would speed up the environmental review process for the Trump administration\u2019s preferred sources of energy\u2014namely oil and gas\u2014while leaving clean energy projects languishing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey couldn\u2019t pass the rule on Tuesday to even consider this bill without making it even better for the fossil fuel industry and even worse for the clean energy industry,\u201d Davis said.<\/p>\n In a public statement following Thursday\u2019s vote, Davis described the amended SPEED Act as \u201ca fossil fuel giveaway that cuts out community input and puts our health and safety at risk to help big polluters.\u201d<\/p>\n The American Clean Power Association, which represents the renewable energy industry, previously hailed the bill as an important step forward for the future of clean energy development. But after the Rules Committee\u2019s changes on Tuesday, the organization dropped its support.<\/p>\n \u201cOur support for permitting reform has always rested on one principle: fixing a broken system for all energy resources,\u201d said ACP CEO Jason Grumet in a Wednesday statement. \u201cThe amendment adopted last night violate[s] that principle. Technology neutrality wasn\u2019t just good policy\u2014it was the political foundation that made reform achievable.\u201d<\/p>\n The American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE), a nonprofit trade and advocacy organization, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n \u201cDurable, bipartisan, technology-neutral permitting reforms that support and advance the full suite of American electricity resources and the necessary expansion of transmission infrastructure to get that electricity from where it\u2019s generated to where it\u2019s needed are essential to meeting that challenge reliably, securely, and most importantly, affordably,\u201d said ACORE CEO Ray Long. \u201cUnfortunately, the changes made on the House floor are a disappointing step backward from achieving these objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n This story is funded by readers like you.<\/p>\n Our nonprofit newsroom provides award-winning climate coverage free of charge and advertising. We rely on donations from readers like you to keep going. Please donate now to support our work.<\/p>\n Donate Now<\/a> <\/p>\n Following the SPEED Act\u2019s passage through the House on Thursday, advocacy group Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions (CRES) issued a public statement praising the bill\u2019s success while noting how the recent amendments had affected the law.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhile we are concerned that post committee additions to the bill could put the certainty of a range of projects at risk, this bill\u2019s underlying reforms are critical to advancing American energy,\u201d CRES President Heather Reams said in the statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Mixed Expectations for the Reform\u2019s Impact<\/p>\n Even before the move to strip protections for renewables from the bill, some critics\u2014like Rep. Mike Levin (D-Calif.)\u2014said that the legislation didn\u2019t go far enough to curtail the president\u2019s \u201call-out assault\u201d against clean power, arguing that the bill does nothing to restore approvals that have already been canceled by the administration, and doesn\u2019t address other roadblocks that have been put in place.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration cannot be trusted to act without specific language, in my view, to protect the clean energy projects already in the pipeline and to prevent the Interior Secretary from unilaterally stopping projects that are needed to lower costs and improve grid reliability,\u201d Levin told Inside Climate News in an interview ahead of the House vote.<\/p>\n Both Levin and Davis pointed to a July memo from the Department of Interior that requires all wind and solar projects on federal land to receive higher-level approval from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.<\/p>\n \u201cThe administration is not even returning the phone calls of project developers. They are not responding to applications being submitted,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThat sort of approach is in stark contrast with the \u2018white glove, concierge service\u2019\u2014and that\u2019s a quote from the Trump administration\u2014the service they are providing for fossil fuel companies to access our public lands.\u201d<\/p>\n The SPEED Act\u2019s opponents also dispute the idea that NEPA reviews are one of the primary causes of permitting delays, arguing that reports from the Congressional Research Service and other groups have found little evidence<\/a> to support those claims.<\/p>\n \u201cOften missing in the conversation around NEPA is the empirical research that\u2019s been done, and there\u2019s a lot of that out there,\u201d said Jarryd Page, a staff attorney at the Environmental Law Institute, in a September interview with Inside Climate News.<\/p>\n That research points to resource constraints as one of the biggest roadblocks, Page said, like not having enough staff to conduct the environmental reviews, or staff lacking adequate experience and technical know-how.<\/p>\n Debate over NEPA and the reform of the permitting process will now move into the Senate, where experts say the SPEED Act will likely undergo further changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI think as the bill goes forwards in the Senate, we\u2019ll probably see a neutral, across-the-board approach to making sure the process is fair for all technology types,\u201d Xan Fishman, an energy policy expert at the Bipartisan Policy Center told ICN after Thursday\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n Fishman stressed it would be crucial to ensure permits for projects wouldn\u2019t suddenly be cancelled for political reasons, but said he was optimistic about how the SPEED Act would be refined in the Senate.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s great to see Congress so engaged with permitting reform,\u201d he said. \u201cBoth sides of the aisle see a need to do better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\tAbout This Story<\/p>\n Perhaps you noticed: This story, like all the news we publish, is free to read. That\u2019s because Inside Climate News is a 501c3 nonprofit organization. We do not charge a subscription fee, lock our news behind a paywall, or clutter our website with ads. We make our news on climate and the environment freely available to you and anyone who wants it.<\/p>\n That\u2019s not all. We also share our news for free with scores of other media organizations around the country. Many of them can\u2019t afford to do environmental journalism of their own. We\u2019ve built bureaus from coast to coast to report local stories, collaborate with local newsrooms and co-publish articles so that this vital work is shared as widely as possible.<\/p>\n Two of us launched ICN in 2007. Six years later we earned a Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting, and now we run the oldest and largest dedicated climate newsroom in the nation. We tell the story in all its complexity. We hold polluters accountable. We expose environmental injustice. We debunk misinformation. We scrutinize solutions and inspire action.<\/p>\n Donations from readers like you fund every aspect of what we do. If you don\u2019t already, will you support our ongoing work, our reporting on the biggest crisis facing our planet, and help us reach even more readers in more places? <\/p>\n Please take a moment to make a tax-deductible donation. Every one of them makes a difference.<\/p>\n Thank you,<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/GettyImages-1229096979-1024x680.jpg\"\/)
A fracked-methane gas pipeline under construction in Peekskill, N.Y. Credit: Erik McGregor\/LightRocket via Getty Images<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Aidan-Hughes-1-300x300.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Goette-Luciak-Headshot-300x300.jpg\"\/)
<\/p>\n