President Trump announced a proposed rule package of National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) regulatory changes that are designed to speed up approvals for projects ranging from pipelines to roads and dams. According to the president, this rule was prompted by the unfairly long amount of time it takes to approve projects.

NEPA is the federal statute that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of any proposed project requiring federal approval, e.g. permits. The proposed rule significantly narrows the definition of what “effects” must be considered in conjunction with a project application. This narrow definition excludes the terms “direct,” “indirect,” and “cumulative.” Instead, the rule defines an “effect” as being “reasonably foreseeable” and having “a reasonably close causal relationship to the proposed action or alternatives,” and the more general and wide-reaching “but for” causal relationship is insufficient.

Importantly the proposed rule excludes climate impacts from consideration. Under the proposed rule, federal agencies could still consider greenhouse gas emissions but would be limited in how far the analysis goes. The emission evaluation would follow the format from draft guidance that the Council on Environmental Quality put out in June 2019 which directs federal agencies to assess the effects of greenhouse gas emissions under the “close causal relationship” standard in the new rule.

The proposed rule is available HERE.