President Trump’s nomination of attorney Laura Swett to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission comes at a pivotal moment for American energy and technology. The promise of artificial intelligence presents incredible economic opportunity but also brings new challenges for energy and national security.
Fortunately, the Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County has tilted the legal landscape in favor of development and away from the endless litigation that has paralyzed critical infrastructure for decades.
Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion clarified what those of us in the energy sector have known for years: the National Environmental Policy Act has been perversely stretched far beyond its original intent. What began as a reasonable procedural step for agencies to take before issuing permits has become what he called a “blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents…to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure and construction projects.”
Environmental groups have weaponized NEPA reviews to block industrial projects across the board—fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, and battery storage alike—using speculative consequences that stretch far beyond any reasonable connection to the actual proposal. The Court has now told federal judges to stop enabling this abuse.
President Trump’s new AI doctrine – the golden age built by American workers, powered by American energy, run on American technology and AI, making America richer, stronger, and more powerful than ever before – couldn’t be clearer. FERC is an important agency carrying out this vision, as it is the lead agency authorizing construction of new natural gas pipelines. The deregulatory steps the agency takes hold an important key to U.S. energy and technological dominance.
Yet here’s the reality: FERC’s recent procedural changes on NEPA fail to capitalize on the opportunity created by Seven County. The commission’s minimum two-year review timeline for environmental impact statements delays infrastructure development and adds tens of millions of dollars for major projects, regardless of complexity or impact. None of this equates to greater environmental protection. It’s merely process for the sake of process. In other words, all cost for no benefit. Unless real changes are made, FERC will continue to be a bureaucratic roadblock to success.
Justice Kavanaugh’s opinion has now given FERC the opportunity to change course. The Seven County ruling definitively declared that courts can no longer force agencies to analyze impacts beyond those directly caused by the proposed project itself. Combined with last year’s Loper Bright decision ending Chevron deference, this creates a powerful one-two punch against both judicial overreach and bureaucratic mission creep.
Other federal agencies are already seizing this opportunity. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum shows what’s possible: his department is completing reviews in 28 days—or in one remarkable case, just 11 days for Utah’s uranium mine approval. In contrast, badly needed pipeline projects can take years to win approval.
FERC should immediately implement the streamlined approach for NEPA reviews that Seven County allows. It should establish expedited tracks for projects with minimal new impacts. Eliminate automatic two-year minimum timelines that bear no relationship to project complexity. Fully utilize AI technology to process environmental paperwork. And exercise its authority to dismiss non-substantive protests that seek delay rather than legitimate protection and assert its statutory role as lead agency, ending the regulatory shell game where other agencies exercise effective veto power.
Most importantly, the Commission should recognize that streamlined review doesn’t mean fewer protections for the environment—it means focusing on actual impacts rather than speculative chains of causation that courts can no longer force agencies to chase.
Our competitors understand that resource dominance translates to economic and geopolitical advantage. China expands its infrastructure while we tie ourselves in regulatory knots that bring about neither a better environment nor greater security. The Court has opened the door to more efficient project approval by limiting NEPA’s scope and emphasizing that agencies should act decisively within their proper jurisdiction.
When Laura Swett is confirmed as Chair, she will have the opportunity to seize this historic opportunity to restore American energy dominance through abundant and affordable energy.
For our economy, security, and future, FERC must choose decisive leadership over bureaucratic theater. The Court has provided the legal framework. FERC must provide the will to use it.
The Honorable Dan R. Brouillette is a distinguished leader in energy, finance, and government policy, having served as 15th U.S. Secretary of Energy, 19th Deputy Secretary of Energy, President of Sempra Infrastructure, and CEO of Edison Electric Institute. With a career spanning public service and corporate leadership, he has played a pivotal role in shaping global energy strategy, advancing technological innovation, and managing large-scale infrastructure investments.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
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”Next week sometime” should be the permitting delay. Most of the risks of a project should be well known, and insisting
on reinventing the wheel for each project is manifest bad faith.
This decision of the SC notwithstanding, the Green Blob will continue its lawfare against energy system development of all kinds. This will go on unless the legal financial penalty is made so severe and so high that this tactic becomes impossible for them to pursue. The problem with modern energy system project execution is that the process itself is the punishment and the absolute barrier to undertaking anything opposed by the Blob.
Sounds good.
Politicians have had long practice in the art of slow walking.
Good grief, you’ve got some dodgy adverts up there today! 😂
Is there, actually, a ‘zero carbon’ energy source that is truly zero carbon though? From one end to the other, and not just through sleight of hand, smoke and mirrors stuff?
Like Drax, for example, where they apparently manage to ‘achieve’ zero emissions by transferring their Carbon footprint to Louisiana, or wherever the woodchip comes from.
What’s the EIEO ratio for cracking Hydrogen, and where does it come from? Or, the source of energy for manufacture of solar panels and wind turbines? Nothing can be considered zero carbon until every single part of its production has no footprint, surely?
Production includes supply chain, obviously, and transportation as well.
“Bureaucratic theater“ – a great phrase.
The UK is riddled with it too, and it is getting worse with a court recently ruling unlawful the government approval of drilling in the North Sea because there had been no assessment of the long term climate effects of so doing. The rigs have been built but it will be unlawful for them to start drilling until …….no one now knows, but it’s going to be a long and expensive performance.
I would like to see a simple and brief cost benefit analysis of AI and have its benefits and shortcomings also listed. I know people who have worked with machine learning in Biology, studied AI in Engineering over 20 years ago and are presently working with one of the biggest computer technology companies and they all have serious misgivings about how useful AI will be in the hands of anyone without a solid foundation in logic and reasoning.
I wrote a critique of UK nuclear energy policy for the Energy and Net Zero Select Committee in Parliament earlier this year which was based on the way in which the French had pursued their nuclear programme in the 1970s-1990s. A very important plank of that was the way in which they short circuited the approvals process by cutting out spurious and repetitive evaluations of the plant design and other features used so often to block progress for consents in the UK.
To my surprise they have written back to me, asking me to comment on the government proposals for evaluating site selection for new nuclear plants including SMRs and AMRs. Evidently some raw nerves have been touched. I think that the new attitudes in the US are at least partly responsible.
What happens when it gets to Miliband is perhaps a different story.
From the Department’s policy paper on Advanced Nuclear Technologies:
“The Ten Point Plan announced government’s intention to invest up to £170 million through the Advanced Nuclear Fund to support an AMR demonstration by the early 2030s.”
£170 million over 5 to 10 years, so between £17 million and £34 million per year: absolute peanuts when compared with the billions splurged on undependable electricity generation. And just in case this largesse should encourage people too much:
“the government provided up to £12 million to the nuclear regulators to build the capability and capacity needed to support and assess Advanced Nuclear Technologies.“
So, initially at least, there’s almost as much money being given to bodies which are devoted to obstructing progress.