Update on the SPEED Act: The Bill to Streamline NEPA Reviews
NEPA reform through the SPEED Act (H.R. 4776) is stalled in the Senate, with no movement since the House passed it on December 18, 2025, and sent it to the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Democrats, led by Senators Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Martin Heinrich (D-NM), have paused permitting reform talks, saying there’s no path forward unless the Trump administration reverses its freeze on offshore wind projects. They see the freeze as an illegal attack on renewables that undermines trust and insist any compromise must include strong, neutral permit certainty to protect all approvals from future unilateral reversals.
Conservative House Republicans, including Reps. Andy Harris (R-MD), Chris Smith (R-NJ), and Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), pushed last-minute amendments to weaken or remove permit certainty, with carve-outs for offshore wind that would let the administration halt those projects while fast-tracking approvals for oil, gas, or mining.
Those amendments didn’t make it into the final House-passed bill, which retains strong permit certainty rules. Agencies cannot rescind, withdraw, amend, or nullify completed environmental documents or approvals without a court order, applicant consent, or narrow exceptions like fraud or immediate harm, keeping the protections technology-neutral.
The debate over weakening certainty still caused a backlash. Clean energy groups like American Clean Power withdrew support, and some moderate Democrats argued that even considering gutting certainty undermined the bill’s goal and let the executive pick winners and losers.
Bipartisan talks are now frozen. Democrats called the bill “dead in the water” in late December 2025, and as of mid-January 2026, there have been no Senate hearings, votes, or progress.
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