CEQ's Climate Guidance Walks A Tightrope On The Energy Transition

In its long-awaited guidance on the National Environmental Policy Act and climate change, the Council on Environmental Quality opens by warning that "the United States faces a profound climate crisis and there is little time left." But in other contexts, the administration acknowledges that addressing the climate crisis will require massive investments in new infrastructure to facilitate the transition to a lower carbon energy system. And many stakeholders believe that one of the primary obstacles to this energy transition is a slow, balkanized, and inefficient environmental review and permitting process. Practitioners are busy sorting out whether CEQ's new guidance will help or hinder this infrastructure build-out.