The White House is calling on the private sector to identify technology solutions to help modernize what the Trump administration contends is a slow process for federal environmental reviews and permitting.
In a new program called Permitting Innovators, the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) Permitting Innovation Center will invite industry to “share tech solutions that will accelerate and modernize federal environmental review and permitting,” the White House announced on April 15.
CEQ will evaluate eligible submissions and invite applicants to participate in the inaugural Permitting Innovators Expo, to be held this summer. While there, the industry partners will demonstrate their proposed solutions to federal agency staff.
Solutions from the expo will be highlighted in the Permitting Innovators Solutions Catalog, which the White House said will be shared with federal agencies and “the broader environmental review and permitting community” later this year.
The submission requirements and evaluation criteria will be announced soon through the Permitting Innovators newsletter, the White House said.
“The technology to modernize permitting exists, reflecting the best of American innovation – but unleashing its full potential will require collaboration across the public and private sectors,” said Council on Environmental Quality Chairman Katherine Scarlett. “Permitting Innovators brings those external stakeholders and federal agencies together to accelerate permitting while maintaining practical environmental standards.”
The innovators program is the latest step in the administration’s efforts to modernize and speed up an environmental review and permitting process that it says is riddled with delays that drive up costs and slow critical infrastructure development.
A year ago, President Donald Trump created the Permitting Innovation Center in a presidential memorandum directing the CEQ to “apply modern technologies” to environmental review and permitting processes.
“The Government does not properly leverage technology to effectively and efficiently evaluate environmental permits, causing significant delay to important infrastructure projects that impact our economic well-being. This will now change,” the memorandum said.
The administration has also vowed to ease environmental permitting rules to bolster the power grid behind its AI Action Plan.
Other federal officials have also expressed interest in modernizing – and digitizing – federal permitting. A bipartisan group of Senators in February introduced the ePermit Act, which would create a cloud-based permit portal and require federal agencies to leverage standardized data systems for environmental reviews.