2. Executive Office of the President · Notable
Issue an executive order creating a unified permitting process for major infrastructure
Printed page 61 2. Executive Office of the President
“The new President should seek to issue a new executive order to create a unified process for major infrastructure projects that includes giving project proponents more control of any regulatory clocks.”
What has happened
- Partially done
A unified process did arrive — for one class of project. EO 14318 creates an expedited federal track for qualifying data center and covered-component projects: Commerce runs a financial-support initiative with OSTP, agencies identify categorical exclusions and emergency authorities to CEQ, and qualifying projects are defined by capital commitment, electric load or national security designation. It is the One Federal Decision idea rebuilt inside a sector rather than across the permitting system, and the clocks are still the agencies'. The order also revoked EO 14141. Nothing in the window creates the government-wide unified process for major infrastructure that the Quote asks for.
- Attempted
The first move was a memorandum, not an order, and it addressed the plumbing rather than the process. "Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century" directs CEQ, with agencies, to build a unified permitting technology action plan and to modernize the systems that carry environmental reviews across government. It is a step toward a single federal process; it creates no unified process and gives project sponsors no control over regulatory clocks.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Read EO 14318 in full at govinfo and the technology memorandum at whitehouse.gov. EO 14156 (Declaring a National Energy Emergency) and EO 14154 section 5 also press agencies to use emergency and general permitting to compress timelines; they are sectoral too. This item sits beside #94 in this chapter, which tracks the statutory permitting overhaul; the technology memorandum is Evidence on both, described against each Quote.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- Unified federal permitting process for major infrastructure projects (successor to EO 13807 One Federal Decision)
- ID
- 89