Building an Environmental Regulatory System that Delivers for America

The Clean Air Act. The Clean Water Act. The National Environmental Policy Act. These and most of our nation’s other foundational environmental laws were passed decades ago – and they have started to show their age. The Clean Air Act, for instance, was written to cut air pollution, not to drive the whole-of-economy response that the climate crisis now warrants. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 was designed to make cars more efficient in a pre-electric vehicle era, and now puts the Department of Transportation in the awkward position of setting fuel economy standards in an era when more and more cars don’t burn gas.

Trying to manage today’s problems with yesterday’s laws results in government by kludge. Legacy regulatory architecture has foundered under a patchwork of legislative amendments and administrative procedures designed to bridge the gap between past needs and present realities. Meanwhile, Congressional dysfunction has made purpose-built updates exceptionally difficult to land. The Inflation Reduction Act, for example, was mostly designed to move money rather than rethink foundational statutes or regulatory processes – because those rethinks couldn’t make it past the filibuster.

As the efficacy of environmental laws has waned, so has their durability. What was once a broadly shared goal – protecting Americans from environmental harm – is now a political football, with rules that whipsaw back and forth depending on who’s in charge. 

The second Trump Administration launched the biggest environmental deregulatory campaign in history against this backdrop. But that campaign, coupled with massive reductions in the federal civil service and a suite of landmark court decisions (including Loper Bright) about how federal agencies regulate, risks pushing U.S. regulatory architecture past the point of sensible and much-needed reform and into a state of complete disrepair.

Dismantling old systems has proven surprisingly easy. Building what comes next will be harder. And the work must begin now. 

It is time to articulate a long-term vision for a government that can actually deliver in an ever-more complex society. The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is meeting this moment by launching an ambitious new project to reimagine the U.S. environmental regulatory state, drawing ideas from across ideological lines.

The Beginning of a New Era

Fear of the risks of systemic change often prevent people from entertaining change in earnest. Think of the years of U.S. squabbles over how or whether to reform permitting and environmental review, while other countries simply raced ahead to build clean energy projects and establish dominance in the new world economy. Systemic stagnation, however, comes with its own consequences. 

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are a case in point when it comes to climate and the environment. Together, these two pieces of legislation represented the largest global investment in the promise of a healthier, more sustainable, and, yes, cheaper future. Unfortunately, as proponents of the “abundance” paradigm and others have observed, rollout was hampered by inefficient processes and outdated laws. Implementing the IRA and the IIJA via old systems, in short, was like trying to funnel an ocean through a garden hose – and as a result, most Americans experienced only a trickle of real-world impact.

Similar barriers are constraining state progress. For example, the way we govern and pay for electricity has not kept pace with a rapidly changing energy landscape – meaning that the United States risks ceding leadership on energy technologies critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and combating climate change.

But we are perhaps now entering a new era. The United States appears to be on the edge of real political realignments, with transpartisan stakes around the core role of government in economic development that do not match up neatly to current coalitions. This realignment presents a crucial opportunity to catalyze a new era of climate, environmental, and democratic progress.

FAS will leverage this opportunity by providing a forum for debate and engagement on different facets of climate and environmental governance, a platform to amplify insights, and the capacity to drive forward solutions. Examples of topics ripe for exploration include:

In working through topics like these, FAS seeks to lay out a positive vision of regulatory reconstruction that is substantively superior to either haphazard destruction or incremental change. Our vision is nothing less than to usher in a new paradigm of climate and environmental governance: one that secures a livable world while reinforcing democratic stability, through systems that truly deliver for America. 

We will center our focus on the federal government given its important role in climate and environmental issues. However, states and localities do a lot of the work of a federated government day-to-day. We recognize that federal cures are unlikely to fully alleviate the symptoms that Americans are experiencing every day, from decaying infrastructure to housing shortages. We are committed to ensuring that solutions are appropriately matched to the root cause of state capacity problems and that federal climate and environmental regulatory regimes are designed to support successful cooperation with local governments and implementation partners. 

FAS is no stranger to ambitious endeavors like these. Since our founding in 1945, we have been committed to tackling the major science policy issues that reverberate through American life. This new FAS workstream will be embedded across our Climate and Environment, Clean Energy, and Government Capacity portfolios. We have already begun engaging and activating the diverse community of scholars, experts, and leaders laying the intellectual groundwork to develop compelling answers to urgent questions surrounding the climate regulatory state, against the backdrop of a broader state capacity movement. True to our nonpartisan commitment, we will build this work on a foundation of cross-ideological curiosity and play on the tension points in existing coalitions that strike us all as most productive.

We invite you to join us in conversation and collaboration. If you want to get involved, contact Zoë Brouns (zbrouns@fas.org).

Technology and NEPA: A Roadmap for Innovation

Improving American competitiveness, security, and prosperity depends on private and public stakeholders’ ability to responsibly site, build, and deploy proposed critical energy, infrastructure, and environmental restoration projects. Some of these projects must undergo some level of National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review, a process that requires federal agencies to consider the environmental impacts of their decisions. 

Technology and data play an important role in and ultimately dictate how agencies, project developers, practitioners and the public engage with NEPA processes. Unfortunately, the status quo of permitting technology falls far short of what is possible in light of existing technology. Through a workstream focused on technology and NEPA, the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) and the Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) have described how technology is currently used in permitting processes, highlighted pockets of innovation, and made recommendations for improvement. 

Key findings, described in more detail below, include: 

Introduction

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that works to embed science, technology, innovation, and experience into government and public discourse. The Environmental Policy Innovation Center (EPIC) is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on building policies that deliver spectacular improvement in the speed of environmental progress. 

FAS and EPIC have partnered to evaluate how agencies use technology in permitting processes required by NEPA. We’ve highlighted pockets of innovation, talked to stakeholders working to streamline NEPA processes, and made evidence-based recommendations for improved technology practices in government. This work has substantiated our hypothesis that technology has untapped potential to improve the efficiency and utility of NEPA processes and data. 

Here, we share challenges that surfaced through our work and actionable solutions that stakeholders can take to achieve a more effective permitting process.

Background

NEPA was designed in the 1970s to address widespread industrial contamination and habitat loss. Today, it often creates obstacles to achieving the very problems it was designed to address. This is in part because of an emphasis on adhering to an expanding list of requirements that adds to administrative burdens and encourages risk aversion. 

Digital systems and tools play an important role at every stage of the permitting process and ultimately dictate how federal employees, permit applicants, and constituents engage with NEPA processes and related requirements. From project siting and design to permit application steps and post-permit activities, agencies use digital tools for an array of tasks throughout the permitting “life-cycle”—including for things like permit data collection and application development; analysis, surveys, and impact assessments; and public comment processes and post-permit monitoring. 

Unfortunately, the current technology landscape of NEPA comprises fragmented and outdated data, sub-par tools, and insufficient accessibility.  Agencies, project developers, practitioners and the public alike should have easy access to information about proposed projects, similar previous projects, public input, and up-to-date environmental and programmatic data to design better projects. 

Our work has largely been focused on center-of-government agencies and actions agencies can take that have benefits across government. 

Key actors include: 

Below, we outline key challenges identified through our work and propose actionable solutions to achieve a more efficient, effective, and transparent NEPA process.

Challenges and Solutions

Product management practices are not being applied broadly to the development of technology tools used in NEPA processes. 

Applying product management practices and frameworks has potential to drastically improve the return on investment in permitting technology and process reform.  Product managers help shepherd the concept for what a project is trying to achieve and get it to the finish line, while project managers ensure that activities are completed on time and on budget.  In a recent blog post, Jennifer Pahlka (Senior Fellow at the Federation of American Scientists and the Niskanen Center) contrasts the project and product funding models in government. Product models, executed by a team with product management skills, facilitate iterative development of software and other tools that are responsive to the needs of users. 

Throughout our work, the importance of product management as a tool for improving permitting technology has become abundantly clear; however there is substantial work to be done to institutionalize product management practices in policy, technology, procurement, and programmatic settings.

Solutions: 

Siloed, fragmented data and systems cost money and time for governments and industry

As one partner said, “NEPA is where environmental data goes to die.” Data is needed to inform both risk analysis and decisions; data can and should be reused for these purposes. However, data used and generated through the NEPA process is often siloed and can’t be meaningfully used across agencies or across similar projects. Consequently, applicants and federal employees spend time and money collecting environmental data that is not meaningfully reused in subsequent decisions.   

Solutions: 

Technology tools used in NEPA processes fall far short of their potential

The status quo of permitting technology falls far short of what is possible in light of existing technology. Permitting tools we identified in our inventory range widely in intended use cases and maturity levels. Opportunities exist to reduce feature fragmentation across these tools and improve the reliability of their content. Additionally, many software tools are built and used by a single agency, instead of being efficiently shared across agencies. Consequently, technology is not realizing its potential to improve environmental decision-making and mitigation through the NEPA process. 

Solutions: 

Existing NEPA technology tools are difficult for agencies, applicants, and constituents to use 

Agencies generally do not conduct sufficient user research in the development of permitting technology. This can be because agencies do not have the resources to hire product management expertise or train staff in product management approaches. Consequently, agencies may only engage users at the very end (if at all), or not think expansively about the range of users in the development of technology for NEPA applications. Advocacy groups and permit applicants aren’t well considered as tools are being developed. As a consequence, permitting forms and other tools are insufficiently customized for their sectors and audiences.

Solutions: 

Poor understanding of the costs and benefits of NEPA processes

Costs and benefits of the federal permitting sector have to date been poorly quantified, which makes it difficult to decide where to invest in technology, process reform, talent, or a combination. Applying technology solutions in the wrong place or at the wrong time could make processes more complicated and expensive, not less. For instance, automating a process that simply should not exist would be a waste of resources. At the same time, eliminating processes that provide critical certainty and consistency for developers while delivering substantial environmental benefits would work against goals of achieving greater efficiency and effectiveness.

A more reliable, comprehensive accounting of NEPA costs and benefits will help us design solutions that cost less for taxpayers, better account for public input, and enable rapid yet responsible deployment of energy infrastructure and other critical projects. 

Solutions: 

Conclusion

Policymakers, agencies, and permitting stakeholders should recognize the important role that systems and digital tools play in every stage of the permitting process and take steps to ensure that these technologies meet user needs. Developing data standards and a data fabric should be a high priority to support agency innovation and collaboration, while case management systems and a cohesive NEPA database are essential for supporting policy decisions and ensuring that data generated through NEPA is reusable. Leveraging technology in the right place at the right time can support permitting innovation that improves American competitiveness, security, and prosperity.

Building a Comprehensive NEPA Database to Facilitate Innovation

The Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Innovation and Jobs Act are set to drive $300 billion in energy infrastructure investment by 2030. Without permitting reform, lengthy review processes threaten to make these federal investments one-third less effective at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That’s why Congress has been grappling with reforming the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) for almost two years. Yet, despite the urgency to reform the law, there is a striking lack of available data on how NEPA actually works. Under these conditions, evidence-based policy making is simply impossible. With access to the right data and with thoughtful teaming, the next administration has a golden opportunity to create a roadmap for permitting software that maximizes the impact of federal investments.

Challenge and Opportunity

NEPA is a cornerstone of U.S. environmental law, requiring nearly all federally funded projects—like bridges, wildfire risk-reduction treatments, and wind farms—to undergo an environmental review. Despite its widespread impact, NEPA’s costs and benefits remain poorly understood. Although academics and the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) have conducted piecemeal studies using limited data, even the most basic data points, like the average duration of a NEPA analysis, remain elusive. Even the Government Accountability Office (GAO), when tasked with evaluating NEPA’s effectiveness in 2014, was unable to determine how many NEPA reviews are conducted annually, resulting in a report aptly titled “National Environmental Policy Act: Little Information Exists on NEPA Analyses.”

The lack of comprehensive data is not due to a lack of effort or awareness. In 2021, researchers at the University of Arizona launched NEPAccess, an AI-driven program aimed at aggregating publicly available NEPA data. While successful at scraping what data was accessible, the program could not create a comprehensive database because many NEPA documents are either not publicly available or too hard to access, namely Environmental Assessments (EAs) and Categorical Exclusions (CEs). The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) also built a language model to analyze NEPA documents but contained their analysis to the least common but most complex category of environmental reviews, Environmental Impact Statements (EISs).

Fortunately, much of the data needed to populate a more comprehensive NEPA database does exist. Unfortunately, it’s stored in a complex network of incompatible software systems, limiting both public access and interagency collaboration. Each agency responsible for conducting NEPA reviews operates its own unique NEPA software. Even the most advanced NEPA software, SOPA used by the Forest Service and ePlanning used by the Bureau of Land Management, do not automatically publish performance data.

Analyzing NEPA outcomes isn’t just an academic exercise; it’s an essential foundation for reform. Efforts to improve NEPA software have garnered bipartisan support from Congress. CEQ recently published a roadmap outlining important next steps to this end. In the report, CEQ explains that organized data would not only help guide development of better software but also foster broad efficiency in the NEPA process. In fact, CEQ even outlines the project components that would be most helpful to track (including unique ID numbers, level of review, document type, and project type).

Put simply, meshing this complex web of existing softwares into a tracking database would be nearly impossible (not to mention expensive). Luckily, advances in large language models, like the ones used by NEPAccess and PNNL, offer a simpler and more effective solution. With properly formatted files of all NEPA documents in one place, a small team of software engineers could harness PolicyAI’s existing program to build a comprehensive analysis dashboard.

Plan of Action

The greatest obstacles to building an AI-powered tracking dashboard are accessing the NEPA documents themselves and organizing their contents to enable meaningful analysis. Although the administration could address the availability of these documents by compelling agencies to release them, inconsistencies in how they’re written and stored would still pose a challenge. That means building a tracking board will require open, ongoing collaboration between technologists and agencies.

Conclusion

The stakes are high. With billions of dollars in federal climate and infrastructure investments on the line, a sluggish and opaque permitting process threatens to undermine national efforts to cut emissions. By embracing cutting-edge technology and prioritizing transparency, the next administration can not only reshape our understanding of the NEPA process but bolster its efficiency too.

This action-ready policy memo is part of Day One 2025 — our effort to bring forward bold policy ideas, grounded in science and evidence, that can tackle the country’s biggest challenges and bring us closer to the prosperous, equitable and safe future that we all hope for whoever takes office in 2025 and beyond.

PLEASE NOTE (February 2025): Since publication several government websites have been taken offline. We apologize for any broken links to once accessible public data.

Frequently Asked Questions
Why is it important to have more data about Environmental Assessments and Categorical Exclusions?

It’s estimated that only 1% of NEPA analyses are Environmental Impact Statements (EISs), 5% are Environmental Assessments (EAs), and 94% are Categorical Exclusions (CEs). While EISs cover the most complex and contentious projects, using only analysis of EISs to understand the NEPA process paints an extremely narrow picture of the current system. In fact, focusing solely on EISs provides an incomplete and potentially misleading understanding of the true scope and effectiveness of NEPA reviews.


The vast majority of projects undergo either an EA or are afforded a CE, making these categories far more representative of the typical environmental review process under NEPA. EAs and CEs often address smaller projects, like routine infrastructure improvements, which are critical to the nation’s broader environmental and economic goals. Ignoring these reviews means disregarding a significant portion of federal environmental decision-making; as a result, policymakers, agency staff, and the public are left with an incomplete view of NEPA’s efficiency and impact.