Real Clear Energy: To Create an Abundant America, Congress Should Pass the SPEED Act
With energy and housing costs climbing, the need to construct more power infrastructure and housing is urgent. However, that straightforward mission is often thwarted by layers of red tape, including permits, environmental reviews, and other procedural hurdles, which can delay or even halt projects capable of creating jobs, lowering costs, and expanding opportunities. What’s worse is that those hurdles often do little to accomplish their original intent of protecting the environment.
The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has become perhaps the clearest example of how well-intentioned environmental laws can devolve into instruments of delay and obstruction. Enacted over 50 years ago, NEPA requires federal agencies to evaluate the environmental impact of major projects. Over time, however, what was meant as a procedural safeguard has become an expensive, years-long ordeal. The White House Council on Environmental Quality reports that completing a full Environmental Impact Statement now takes an average of 4.5 years. The costs are daunting. A 2017 Department of Energy survey found that preparing an Environmental Assessment costs roughly $313,000, and a full statement costs more than $6 million. Such delays and expenses drive up project costs and can discourage investment altogether.
Recognizing the need for change, House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) introduced the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act in July. Their bill modernizes NEPA in several important ways.
First, it reinforces NEPA’s original intent as a procedural statute. The legislation makes explicit that NEPA is “a purely procedural statute intended to ensure Federal agencies consider the environmental impacts of their actions…” and “…does not mandate particular results, and only prescribes a process.” This important clarification of purpose curbs regulatory overreach while preserving transparency.
Second, the bill responds to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which held that agencies need only examine the direct effects of a project, not speculative downstream impacts. By codifying this standard, the SPEED Act ensures that environmental reviews focus on direct, tangible, and measurable consequences instead of endless hypotheticals about potential second-order effects of a project.
Finally, the proposal addresses the growing problem of litigation that stalls or kills projects long after approvals are granted. It shortens the statute of limitations for lawsuits from six years to 150 days, limits legal challenges to those who participated in the public comment process, and requires courts to send any flawed analysis back to the agency for correction rather than halting construction outright. Together, these changes would provide developers with greater certainty and protect projects from being derailed by late-stage legal challenges from a small number of highly organized anti-development NGOs.
There is a gradual building of cross-ideological cooperation on these issues. At Abundance DC, a conference that brought together elected officials, policy experts, and entrepreneurs, there was a focus on a simple goal: to make it easier to build in America.
One powerful way to challenge these barriers to building is in the courts. I’ve seen firsthand how excessive regulation can stifle initiative and deny people the opportunity to pursue the American Dream. My law firm, the Pacific Legal Foundation, has represented a Florida retiree blocked from building a simple horse stable because the Army Corps of Engineers wrongly declared her property a “wetland.” We’ve defended a young entrepreneur forced to pay a $120,000 “mitigation” fee to build a home, allegedly to protect an endangered bird—the Florida scrub-jay—even though the land is unsuitable for the species. And we’ve fought for a family-owned Alaska timber company being driven to the edge of bankruptcy because the U.S. Forest and Wildlife Service refuses to honor its own 2016 management plan for timber sales.
When environmental laws are allowed to morph into weapons of obstruction, they no longer protect nature—they punish Americans who are simply trying to use their own land responsibly.
By restoring NEPA to its intended role and streamlining an overburdened review system, the SPEED Act would clear a path for the energy, housing, and infrastructure investments America urgently needs.
Now that the bill passed out of the Committee on a bipartisan basis last month, its next stop is the House floor. If Congress wants to create a more abundant and prosperous future, passing the SPEED Act is an essential step.
This op-ed was originally published in Real Clear Energy on December 11, 2025.
