SPEED Act Seeks to Streamline Permitting of Energy Assets

Written by John Egan for IIR News (Sugar Land, Texas)

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Summary

The U.S. House of Representatives this month passed a bill that aims to streamline the federal permitting process to facilitate faster construction of energy infrastructure while also prohibiting states from regulating artificial intelligence. The Senate may take up the measure in 2026.

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NEPA and the Federal Permitting Process

Federal lawmakers and agencies have wrangled for years over how to update and streamline one of the nation's foundational environmental laws, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), which was enacted in 1970.

Critics, typically Republicans and affected industries, claimed NEPA was being weaponized by those who oppose a wide range of projects, including but not limited to oil and gas pipelines, oil and gas drilling and interstate electric transmission lines. While Democrats and some environmental organizations concede that NEPA has become unwieldly since it was enacted in 1970, they have resisted dramatic change, arguing that federal agencies still need to analyze the environmental effects of proposed infrastructure projects.

For more on prior efforts to modify NEPA, see July 17, 2020, article - Trump Administration Finalizes Changes to Major Environmental Law; April 22, 2022, article - CEQ Does a Two-Step on NEPA Changes, Issues Final Phase I Rule; and March 14, 2025, article - EPA Will Reconsider 31 Energy and Environmental Rules from Trump's Predecessors.

Prior federal permitting reform efforts tended to chug along inside the Washington Beltway when the industries benefitting from those efforts were electric power, oil & gas producers, metals & minerals firms or oil & gas pipelines. But this year, when data centers and artificial intelligence (AI) were added to the mix, the debate assumed a higher level of urgency.

"We've made it entirely too difficult to build big things in this country, and if we do not reform that, that will be a powerful gift that we are giving to China," Representative Dusty Johnson, (R-South Dakota), a member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, told CNBC.

Further boosting the urgency inside the Beltway was states' efforts to legislate or regulate AI. The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that state legislators introduced more than 1,000 bills regulating AI in 2025.

At the urging of Big Tech companies, and buoyed by those companies' hefty contributions to lobbying efforts and reelection campaigns, the House of Representatives on December 17 voted 221-196 to pass the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act (H.R. 4776).

There is no companion bill in the Senate. If and when that body develops a bill, it will originate in the Environment & Public Work Committee, chaired by GOP Senator Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia), a longtime advocate of paring back NEPA. But the panel's most senior Democrat, Sheldon Whitehouse (Rhode Island), is expected to lead the committee's Democrats in opposing the farthest reaches of the SPEED Act.

If the House and Senate adopt different versions of the legislation, those differences will have to be ironed out in a conference committee. If the Senate is unable to pass a bill, the measure dies at the end of the current session, in late 2026.

If the essence of the House bill is adopted by the Senate, that would create a federal law that strengthens the Trump administration's determination not to blunt AI with what the president sees as onerous laws or regulations. On December 11, President Donald Trump signed an executive order preempting states from regulating AI. For more on that, see December 24, 2025, article - Will GOP Food Fight Break Out Over AI Regulation, Affecting Data Center Buildout? Legal observers have said that laws enacted by Congress or executive-level agency rulemakings have a stronger legal basis than a presidential executive order.

What Does the SPEED Act Do?

The bill was sponsored by Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee, and Representative Jared Golden (D-Maine), the senior Democrat on that panel. Eleven Democrats joined their GOP colleagues in supporting the bill. One Republican voted against it.

According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service, the measure "limits the scope of the NEPA and modifies the environmental review of major federal actions under NEPA to generally limit the number of federal actions that trigger NEPA review and to expedite the review process."

The CRS added, "the bill redefines major federal actions, including to specify that an agency may not determine that an action is a major federal action based solely on the provision of federal funds." This was a huge win for firms receiving federal funding under the CHIPS and Science Act.

The SPEED Act "also excludes from the requirement for NEPA review certain proposed agency actions that have already been reviewed under another federal, state, or tribal environmental review statute that meets the requirements of NEPA."

The House-passed measure also directs an agency, when preparing an environmental document for a proposed agency action, to consider only those effects proximately caused by the immediate project or action under consideration. "Agencies may not consider effects that are speculative, attenuated from the project or action, separate in time or place from the project or action, or in relation to separate projects or actions." This was a way to preclude agency actions arising from concerns about the long-term effect of global warming.

The bill makes a variety of other modifications to NEPA, including limiting judicial review of NEPA cases.

Though not specifically noted by the CRS, one other thing the SPEED Act would do is to codify Trump's power to revoke renewable energy permits or halt construction of those projects once construction began. A measure limiting that authority was included in a draft of the bill, but the insistence of anti-wind members of the House Freedom Caucus led to its removal from the final version.

Supporters Love it, Opponents Hate it

Reaction to the SPEED Act was split along familiar lines: Republican officials and energy interests supported it while Democrats and environmental organizations slammed it.

In a statement, National Association of Manufacturers President and Chief Executive Officer Jay Timmons said, "With permitting reform, manufacturers will be able to build and expand operations all across the country, creating more well-paying jobs that strengthen communities and help families thrive. It's about lifting people up, expanding opportunity and making the American Dream a reality."

The American Public Power Association (APPA), which represents over 2,000 community-owned electric utilities across the country, also strongly supported the bill. In an unsigned statement, it said, "APPA strongly supports the SPEED Act to narrow the scope of environmental reviews and enable public power utilities to build and maintain infrastructure that ensures reliable, affordable electric service. It establishes judicial review timelines and requirements to prevent frivolous lawsuits that can lengthen the permitting process by years."

Democrats and environmental advocates had a very different view. "The SPEED Act treats environmental reviews as a nuisance rather than a tool to prevent costly, harmful mistakes," said California Representative Jared Huffman, the top Democrat on the Natural Resources panel. "Weakening environmental review won't fix permitting challenges (and) won't help us build the clean energy future that we need. Gutting NEPA only invites more risk, more mistakes, more litigation, more damage to communities that already face too many environmental burdens."

The Southern Environmental Law Center said the bill was "another attempt to give polluters a free pass." Nat Mund, the group's director of federal affairs, added: "This is the worst possible time to relax (environmental) guardrails. This bill is another way for the Trump administration to allow polluters to write their own ticket to pollute while disregarding the people who are impacted by their actions. And it will become another tool for them to continue attacking clean energy projects to benefit their allies in coal, oil, and gas."

Key Takeaways

• The SPEED Act would sharply curtail the ability of stakeholders to use the National Environmental Policy Act to block infrastructure projects requiring federal permits.
• There is no companion measure in the U.S. Senate.
• The legislation is the most recent in a long line of efforts to update and streamline the federal permitting process.
• The bill, if passed by the Senate, would codify Trump's executive order that empowers the federal government to preempt state legislative and regulatory efforts to regulate AI.
• The bill also ratified the president's authority to rescind already-issued permits for renewable energy projects and to stop construction of already-permitted renewable energy projects.

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