Environmental Permitting

On April 15th 2025, this Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century Executive Order was signed.

The new directive pushes agencies to ditch paper forms, speed things up with better tech, and make the whole process more transparent. It also asks the Council on Environmental Quality to create a tech roadmap for a shared system across agencies. The goal? Cut red tape, make smarter decisions, and keep projects moving without sacrificing environmental protections.

I had a chance to spend a year with the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) to better understand the technology landscape and bureaucratic hurdles that cause so many of the delays on our large infrastructure projects in the United States.

This explainer video from the WSJ details the SunZia wind farm project, a $11B renewable energy initiative that will deliver 3.5 GW of wind power from New Mexico to Arizona and California via a 550-mile transmission line. Set to finish in 2026, it will power 3 million homes and boost clean energy access across the western U.S.

I love this problem space because it combines emerging technologies such as drones, sensors, AI, and satellite imagery with decades-old problems of federal, state, and local government collaboration (think case management and document sharing).

If you want to go deeper, check out “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, and “Why Nothing Works” by Mark J. Dunkelman. These books cite numerous examples of infrastructure projects that take forever or fail, and will help you understand how we have reached this moment in the United States.

Keep reading:

What is NEPA? NEPA stands for the National Environmental Policy Act, a U.S. environmental law enacted in 1970. It mandates that federal agencies assess the environmental impact of their actions and decisions before making them.

The “Permitting Dashboard” displays a list of large infrastructure projects in the United States.

Arrow Canyon Solar Project – an example of a public comment form.