Samuel Taylor, MJLST Staffer
The National Environmental Protection Act, or “NEPA”, has been essential in protecting America’s air and water, managing health hazards, and preserving environmental integrity. For decades, environmental activist groups, the government, and regular citizens relied on and benefitted from enforcing these NEPA against those looking to pollute, poison, or endanger Americans and their environment. NEPA, however, is proving to be less suitable for addressing the country’s imminent environmental challenge: climate change. As proponents of green energy scramble to ditch fossil fuels, NEPA and its procedural requirements are accused of delaying or halting renewable energy projects. Environmental protection laws remain essential to stopping the dangers they were passed to stop, and many new green energy projects pose additional risks to the environment, but we also need to transition away from fossil fuels as fast as possible to avoid the worst consequences of climate change. The conflict between the need to address climate change and the need to maintain environmental protections has created a regulatory challenge that may not have a perfect solution.
Enacted in 1970, NEPA was the first major environmental protection measure taken in the US.[i] The “magna carta” of environmental laws applies to all “major federal actions significantly affecting the environment”.[ii] Major federal actions can include everything from infrastructure projects like proposed dams, bridges, highways, and pipelines, to housing developments, research projects, and wildlife management plans.[iii] Before a federal agency can act, there are a series of procedures they must follow which force them to consider the environmental impacts of the potential action. These procedures involve community outreach, the effects of past and future actions in the region, and providing the public with a detailed explanation of the agency’s findings, and often take years to fully complete.[iv] By requiring the government to follow these procedures “to the fullest extent possible,” NEPA aims to ensure that environmental concerns are given sufficient consideration before any harmful actions are taken.[v] Notably, NEPA is not a results-oriented statute, but a process-oriented one.[vi] No agency decision can be made until after its procedures are followed, but once they are, NEPA does not mandate a particular decision.[vii] NEPA does not even require that environmental concerns be given more weight than any other factors.[viii] Nevertheless, if an agency fails to properly follow NEPA procedures, all resulting decisions can be invalidated if challenged in the courts.[ix]
Though passing NEPA was the first step Congress took towards addressing environmental concerns, and decades of NEPA success stories have followed, there is growing concern about its ability to adapt to the pressing challenges presented by global climate change.[x] NEPA, critics say, drastically slows the government’s ability to invest in green energy because each step of the procedure can be challenged in court.[xi] Corporate competitors in the renewable energy sector, environmental interest groups, concerned citizen groups, and Native American tribes have all challenged various projects’ compliance with NEPA requirements.[xii] Many of these groups have legitimate concerns about the projects, and NEPA allows them to stall or halt development while the government is forced to further consider their potential environmental impacts. This causes direct conflict between these valid concerns and efforts to reverse the country’s reliance on fossil fuels.[xiii] Collectively, the long procedures and potential legal challenges that accompany NEPA’s requirements present serious hurdles to the production of green energy.
Legal experts disagree, perhaps not surprisingly, over the extent to which NEPA hinders the production of green energy sources. Some groups believe the rhetoric surrounding NEPA’s deficiencies is an exaggeration, citing data that shows only a very small percentage of green energy projects actually require the production of EISs.[xiv] Others present NEPA and other environmental protection laws as serious hurdles preventing the production of renewable energy at the pace we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change.[xv] They argue that this data is not properly representative of all clean energy projects, ignores the delays caused by litigation, and does not properly account for the likelihood that delays will get worse in the future.[xvi] Because there is little consensus regarding the extent of the problem, there is likewise almost no agreement on a potential solution.
Lawmakers and legal scholars have proposed a range of approaches to the NEPA problem. Most drastically, a bill introduced to the U.S. House Committee on Natural Resources by Representative Bruce Westerman would largely eradicate most NEPA provisions by limiting consideration of new scientific evidence, allowing some projects to go exempt from NEPA’s requirements, and drastically limiting community instigated judicial review.[xvii] Other proposals are more modest, including permitting reform to favor green energy projects, placing some limits on judicial review, and collecting more comprehensive data on NEPA issues.[xviii] Still others are staunchly against most reforms, arguing that weakening any NEPA provisions would open the door for greater environmental abuses.[xix] The differing opinions on the scope of the problem and the wide range of proposed solutions amount to a problem that will not be easy to solve.
The legal community is divided on the efficacy of existing NEPA regulations that have, for decades, promoted environmental protection. In the face of climate change and the accompanying need for renewable energy, it must be determined whether NEPA is truly hindering the switch to green energy. The United States must build more renewable energy infrastructure if we are to avoid the worst consequences of global climate change, but with concern growing that our own environmental protection laws are hindering progress, it will be challenging to move forward in a manner that balances the need for green energy production against the necessity of strong environmental protection laws.
Notes
[i] Sam Kalen, NEPA’s Trajectory: Our Waning Environmental Charter From Nixon to Trump, 50 Environmental Law Reporter 10398, 10398 (2020).
[ii] Id.; Mark A. Chertok, Overview of the National Environmental Policy Act: Environmental Impact Assessments and Alternatives (2021); 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321–70.
[iii] Elly Pepper, Never Eliminate Public Advice: NEPA Success Stories, Natural Resources Defense Council (Feb. 1, 2015), https://www.nrdc.org/resources/never-eliminate-public-advice-nepa-success-stories#:~:text=The%20NEPA%20process%20has%20saved,participated%20in%20important%20federal%20decisions.
[iv] Chertok, supra note ii; 42 U.S.C. §§ 4321–70.
[v] Chertok, supra note ii; Catron County v. U.S.F.W.S., 75 F.3d 1429, 1437 (10th Cir. 1996).
[vi] Chertok, supra note ii; Catron County at 1434.
[vii] Chertok, supra note ii.
[viii] Balt. Gas & Elec. Co. v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 462 U.S. 87, 97 (1983).
[ix] Chertok, supra note ii (citing Lands Council v. Powell, 395 F.3d 1019, 1027 (9th Cir. 2005)).
[x] Pepper, supra note iii; Aidan Mackenzie & Santi Ruiz, No, NEPA Really Is a Problem for Clean Energy, Institute For Progress (Aug. 17, 2023), https://ifp.org/no-nepa-really-is-a-problem-for-clean-energy/#nepa-will-harm-clean-energy-projects-even-more-in-the-future; Darian Woods & Adrian Ma, Environmental Laws Can Be an Obstancel in Building Green Energy Infrastructure, NPR (Apr. 13, 2022), https://www.npr.org/2022/04/13/1092686675/environmental-laws-can-be-an-obstacle-in-building-green-energy-infrastructure.
[xi] Mackenzie & Ruiz, supra note x; See, e.g. Ocean Advocates v. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, 402 F.3d 846 (9th Cir. 2005) (where the agency finding of no significant impact was challenged by an environmental protection group); Sierra Club v. Bosworth, 510 F.3d 1016 (9th Cir. 2007) (where the agency’s EIS analysis was challenged by the Sierra Club).
[xii] Niina H. Farah, Tribes Sue Over NEPA Review for Oregon Offshore Wind Auction, Politico (Sep. 18, 2024), https://www.eenews.net/articles/tribes-sue-over-nepa-review-for-oregon-offshore-wind-auction/; Christine Billy, Update: Congestion Pricing: A Case Study on Interstate Air Pollution Disputes, New York State Bar Association (Sep. 23, 2024), https://nysba.org/update-congestion-pricing-a-case-study-on-interstate-air-pollution-disputes/; Jonathan D. Brightbill & Madalyn Brown Feiger, Environmental Challenges Seek to Block Renewable Projects, Winston & Strawn LLP (Sep. 1, 2021), https://www.winston.com/en/blogs-and-podcasts/winston-and-the-legal-environment/environmental-challenges-seek-to-block-renewable-projects.
[xiii] Farah, supra note xii; Brightbill & Feiger, supra note xiv.
[xiv] Ann Alexander, Renewable Energy and Environmental Protection Is Not an Either/Or, Natural Resources Defense Council (Jan. 18, 2024), https://www.nrdc.org/bio/ann-alexander/renewable-energy-and-environmental-protection-not-eitheror.
[xv] Mackenzie & Ruiz, supra note x.
[xvi] Alexander, supra note xiv; Mackenzie & Ruiz, supra note x.
[xvii] Defenders of Wildlife, Defenders Slams Bill Aiming to Rollback NEPA and Gut Environmental Protections, (Sep. 10, 2024), https://defenders.org/newsroom/defenders-slams-bill-aiming-rollback-nepa-and-gut-environmental-protections.
[xviii] Brian Potter, Arnab Datta & Alec Stapp, How to Stop Environmental Review from harming the Environment, Institute For Progress (Sep. 13, 2022), https://ifp.org/environmental-review/.
[xix] Alexander, supra note xiv; Sierra Club