Dive Brief:
- The White House Council on Environmental Quality Jan. 29 announced launch of a pilot program for CE Works, a technology platform that digitizes the environmental review process.
- CE Works is designed to speed up categorical exclusion determinations under the National Environmental Policy Act.
- In a statement, National Association of Manufacturers President and CEO Jay Timmons called CE Works “a promising path to modernize and accelerate federal environmental reviews.”
Dive Insight:
Removing regulatory hurdles to environmental permitting and review has long been an industry priority.
For example, industry and trade groups told the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at a hearing Jan. 28 that Congress urgently needs to enact permitting reforms for faster approval of projects that are critical for meeting the country’s energy and infrastructure needs.
CE Works is designed to do just that. The White House said in a press release Jan. 29 that the program digitizes the environmental review process to help federal agencies complete CE determinations under NEPA.
Specifically, the program provides agencies with a digital pathway to apply CEs. Agency staff can use the platform to select an appropriate CE, collaborate among resource experts within the agency, route the determination for approval, and generate a record for publication.
“Federal agencies make thousands of CE determinations per year, and making determinations with this new technology will cut through red tape and result in expedited timelines for important energy and infrastructure projects,” the White House said.
The program was developed in response to President Donald Trump’s April 15, 2025 memo called Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century. The memo calls on CEQ to design and test prototype tools for use under the Permitting Technology Action Plan for modernizing the technology used for federal permitting and environmental review processes for infrastructure projects.
CEQ is also working with the General Services Administration and the Bureau of Land Management on the pilot.
Timmons praised the CE Works program in a statement Jan. 30.
“Our government must cut the red tape to speed up manufacturers’ ability to put shovels in the ground, and a modern permitting system needs modern technology,” he said. “The White House CEQ’s CE Works pilot program offers a promising path to modernize and accelerate federal environmental reviews — an important step to efficiently implementing the National Environmental Policy Act by quickly helping agencies identify cases where time-consuming reviews are not necessary.”
Timmons added that CE Works “will ensure that critical energy and infrastructure projects can advance without unnecessary delays through unnecessary reviews.”
Environmental groups did not immediately respond to requests for comment. However, many of them have criticized previous efforts by Congress and the Trump administration to amend NEPA or otherwise streamline the environmental permitting process, arguing that such changes would endanger human health and the environment by weakening review standards.
In December, the House passed bipartisan reforms to NEPA and the Clean Water Act, including permitting reforms, via the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development Act. That bill is now pending in the Senate.
