For decades, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review process has been one of the most significant sources of schedule uncertainty for infrastructure construction in the United States. Major projects have regularly spent years—sometimes longer than the actual construction schedule—navigating environmental review before a shovel could break ground. In 2025 and into 2026, that calculus is changing rapidly. A series of executive orders, agency rulings, new federal guidance, and congressional action have produced the most comprehensive overhaul of federal environmental permitting in a generation.

For construction owners, contractors, and project developers, the practical implication is straightforward: federal infrastructure permits that once took years may now move in months—and the construction pipeline for projects previously bottlenecked in NEPA review is beginning to accelerate.

CEQ Eliminates Its NEPA Regulations—and Issues New Guidance

The foundation of the current reform came on February 25, 2025, when the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) issued an interim final rule removing its NEPA implementing regulations from the Code of Federal Regulations—regulations that had been in place since 1978. The rule took effect on April 11, 2025, and was finalized as permanent on January 8, 2026. With the removal of CEQ's binding regulations, federal agencies now implement NEPA under their own agency-specific procedures, guided by CEQ guidance documents rather than uniform federal regulations.

On April 9, 2026, CEQ issued new guidance for all federal departments and agencies on how to establish, revise, adopt, and apply categorical exclusions—the NEPA mechanism that allows agencies to approve actions without preparing a full environmental assessment or environmental impact statement, because the action "normally does not have a significant effect" on the environment. The White House press release framing the guidance stated: "It should never take longer to permit a critical infrastructure project than it takes to build it."

CEQ simultaneously launched two digital tools: the Categorical Exclusion Explorer, a searchable public database of all existing categorical exclusions across federal agencies, and CE Works, a technology platform that digitizes the process of applying for and completing a categorical exclusion. These tools are expected to make the application of CEs faster and more transparent for project sponsors.

FAST-41 Reaches Record Portfolio Size

The Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC)—the agency created by Title 41 of the 2015 FAST Act to streamline federal permitting of major infrastructure projects—ended 2025 with the largest portfolio in its history. In a January 20, 2026 press release, the Council reported that its active project portfolio had expanded from one mining project at the start of the Trump Administration to more than 76 active projects, with 13 projects completing federal permitting in 2025 alone.

Notable FAST-41 milestones in 2025 included the first-ever use of the Council's transparency authority—an executive-order-authorized tool for tracking mining and mineral projects on the Federal Permitting Dashboard—which was applied to 40 mining-related projects, nine of which completed federal permitting by year's end. The Sparrows Point Container Terminal in Baltimore became the first FAST-41 project to complete all federal permitting actions early, finishing all NEPA milestones ahead of schedule, according to the FPISC. In August 2025, the Council signed its first statewide MOU with Alaska, providing federal permitting support for critical infrastructure across the state.

"This has been an exciting year for the Permitting Council, as our agency has taken on a prominent role in bringing real, measurable improvements to federal permitting and getting more projects to the finish line," said Permitting Council Executive Director Emily Domenech.

The number of states with at least one active FAST-41 project grew by five in 2025 to 25 states. The Council also welcomed its first manufacturing sector project—the Riverview East Stack Extension Project in Florida—to FAST-41 coverage in July 2025.

The March 2026 Executive Order: Permitting Reform Comes to Housing

On March 13, 2026, President Trump signed an executive order titled "Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction," extending federal permitting reform explicitly into the residential construction sector. The order—analyzed by ACRA and published in full on the White House website—directed several significant federal actions:

The Army Corps of Engineers and EPA were directed to review and revise stormwater, wetlands, and Clean Water Act Section 404 requirements to reduce housing construction costs. CEQ was directed to issue guidance maximally exempting housing construction, adaptive reuse, and housing-related infrastructure projects from NEPA review through categorical exclusions. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation was directed to reduce Section 106 consultation burdens on housing and housing-related projects including roads, water, and sewer infrastructure. HUD was directed to develop and publish regulatory best practices for state and local governments, including capping permitting timelines, allowing by-right development for single-family homes, and enabling third-party inspections.

The order also specifically addressed manufactured and modular housing, directing states and localities to stop restricting such housing based solely on construction method rather than objective building and safety standards.

Multiple Agencies Move in Parallel

The permitting reform is not limited to CEQ guidance and FAST-41. Multiple federal agencies have revised their NEPA procedures independently. The Army Corps of Engineers updated its NEPA rules to categorically exclude jurisdictional determinations, permit threshold decisions, small pier and dock construction, and minor maintenance dredging—reducing the number of projects requiring environmental assessments or EIS reviews, according to analysis from K&L Gates.

The Surface Transportation Board proposed a comprehensive permitting reform rule in April 2026 that would expand categorical exclusions for rail infrastructure—including construction of connecting track within existing rights-of-way—and set new deadlines and page limits for environmental assessments. The EPA issued guidance in May 2026 to streamline Clean Air Act Title V permitting, directly citing the need to accelerate manufacturing reshoring and data center construction.

The Supreme Court's 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, Colorado has also reshaped NEPA review, confirming that agencies need not consider impacts that are "remote in time, geographically remote, or the product of a lengthy causal chain," according to the K&L Gates analysis. Federal agencies are now updating their regulations to reflect this standard.

What It Means for the Construction Industry

For construction professionals, the cumulative effect of these reforms is a permitting environment that is materially faster and more predictable than it was 18 months ago. Projects that previously faced multi-year NEPA reviews may now qualify for categorical exclusions. Projects enrolled in FAST-41 get binding schedules, interagency coordination, and dashboard visibility. Residential and housing-related infrastructure projects face a specific federal push to reduce local and federal permitting burdens.

The GW Regulatory Studies Center's February 2026 analysis of FAST-41 permitting timelines found that variation in federal permitting is driven less by NEPA itself and more by the type and sequencing of non-NEPA permits—a finding that points to continued reform work ahead. But the direction is clear: the federal government is systematically reducing the front-end schedule risk that has historically constrained infrastructure project delivery in the United States.

Sources

White House — CEQ Issues Guidance on Categorical Exclusions (April 9, 2026)
Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council — Year One Trump Administration FAST-41 Accomplishments (January 20, 2026)
White House — Executive Order: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Home Construction (March 13, 2026)
K&L Gates — More Federal Agencies Streamline NEPA Procedures to Expedite Review and Permitting (August 5, 2025)
Sidley Austin — New Guidance to Federal Agencies Adopting and Applying Categorical Exclusions (April 15, 2026)
GW Regulatory Studies Center — Federal Permitting Under FAST-41 (February 4, 2026)
ACRA — New Executive Order on Housing (March 2026)