Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

13. Environmental Protection Agency · Notable

Exempt efficiency improvements from triggering New Source Review permits

Not started

426 13. Environmental Protection Agency

“Develop reforms to ensure that when a facility improves efficiency within its production process, new permitting requirements are not triggered.”

What has happened

  1. Not started

    EPA's permitting reforms have gone to timing, not to efficiency. The agency issued guidance in September 2025 and proposed a rule in May 2026 redefining when "actual construction" begins, so that cement pads, wiring and piping can go in before a major permit issues, and proposed in July 2026 to give states more discretion over minor source public participation. None of it exempts a facility that improves efficiency within an existing production process from new permitting requirements. EPA did withdraw the Biden proposal that would have narrowed project emissions accounting, which leaves the 2020 netting rule standing.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

  • EPA has an active New Source Review reform program and none of it is about efficiency projects. Progress is measured on this ask, not on adjacent work: the September 2025 guidance and the May 2026 proposal are about when construction may begin, not about what triggers a permit when a facility improves a process it already runs.
  • The closest the record comes is the July 2025 withdrawal of the Biden proposal on project emissions accounting, which preserves the 2020 rule that lets a project’s emission decreases be netted against its increases. That protects an existing route rather than developing the reform the Quote asks for; it is on the event as Evidence.
  • The minor source proposal of 2026-07-07 devolves public participation requirements to states and does not touch applicability.
  • Unified Agenda, read 2026-09-01. We read EPA’s full Unified Agenda on reginfo.gov (214 entries across the active, long-term and completed stages), because the Federal Register prints only the entries that need a Regulatory Flexibility analysis, and the 2026-08-27 negative was taken from that abbreviated version. Nearest entries: RIN 2060-AW84, Revision to “Begin Actual Construction” in the New Source Review Preconstruction Permitting Program and RIN 2060-AV67, Revisions to the Public Participation Requirements in Minor New Source Review Permitting Program (both EPA/OAR, Proposed Rule Stage, NPRM 07/2026): https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=2060-AW84 and https://www.reginfo.gov/public/do/eAgendaViewRule?pubId=202510&RIN=2060-AV67. These are the two entries behind the published New Source Review work already described above. No RIN on the agenda carries project emissions accounting or an efficiency-project exclusion, so the negative reaches the agenda as well as the Federal Register and the Status is unchanged.
Action
other
Object
New Source Review permitting triggers
ID
1089