NRECA's years-long push to streamline federal environmental reviews for energy projects is bearing fruit for electric cooperatives, cutting development times for crucial generation and transmission facilities.

But co-ops still face considerable permitting challenges, and NRECA continues to seek additional reforms that will make it easier for them to build and maintain infrastructure to meet rising power demand and improve electric reliability and affordability.

“Federal permitting is a tangled web that makes getting anything built in this country complex, time-consuming and costly," NRECA Senior Regulatory Affairs Director Viktoria Seale says. “Electric cooperatives need faster and more predictable permitting processes to make long-term investment decisions for their infrastructure projects."

NRECA and its member co-ops successfully advocated for measures in the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023 that set firm deadlines and page limits on federal permitting reviews under the National Environmental Policy Act, among other policy changes.

Those reforms, along with recent agency actions and court decisions clarifying the scope of NEPA, are speeding federal reviews that some co-op projects must undergo, including for those that receive loans or other funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Utilities Service.

'Faster reviews across the board'

Arkansas Electric Cooperative Corp. is building a two-turbine, 850-megawatt natural gas-fired power plant near Naples, Texas, to partially replace about 1,200 MW of coal-fueled generation that is set to retire between now and 2030. The gas plant, which is expected to start commercial operation by the end of 2028, will bolster reliability in the Southwest Power Pool.

The generation and transmission co-op broke ground on the Naples facility about five months ahead of schedule due to NEPA process improvements, said Stephen Cain, AECC director of compliance.

Because the G&T is using RUS financing for the project, it had to undergo an environmental assessment under NEPA. The Naples plant received its finding of no significant impact, or FONSI, determination about six months earlier than expected.

“Being able to start essentially five months early on the groundbreaking releases some pressure off of the schedule," AECC Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Oliver says. “It makes that 2028 [target] a lot more achievable."

Cain attributes the swifter approval to the NEPA review page limits enacted in 2023 and other process changes at RUS, as well as improved coordination and communication with RUS officials and staff.

Those benefits are being felt by other co-ops, he added.

“They're seeing more efficient, faster reviews across the board," says Cain, who also expects an efficient NEPA review of the AECC's nearly 1,500-MW planned Independence Gas Plant in Arkansas.

Permitting improvements are also helping a major co-op transmission project move ahead quickly.

Georgia Transmission Corp. recently completed an environmental impact statement review in just seven and a half months for its Dresden-Talbot County transmission project, despite a record-long government shutdown that temporarily suspended many agency activities.

The project includes a 67-mile, 500-kilovolt power line and modifications to two substations and will address growing deployment of inverter-based, renewable energy and the loss of traditional fossil fuel-based generation.

The review marked Georgia Transmission's first EIS, but the co-op said the process in the past could take more than two years for many applicants to complete.

“For a transmission project of this scale, an efficient federal review process helps us stay on schedule, control costs and deliver the infrastructure our member-owners need to serve their communities," said Camron Carden, the Tucker, Georgia-based co-op's vice president of transmission projects. “The Dresden–Talbot EIS is a strong example of what effective agency coordination can achieve. The partnership between USDA, RUS and Georgia Transmission remains essential to providing reliable, cost-effective power to Georgia."

The co-op attributes the swift review partly to a January 2025 executive order from President Donald Trump that declared a national energy emergency and directed agencies to expedite delivery of energy infrastructure.

Revised NEPA rules also helped the EIS process move more quickly, according to Georgia Transmission.

The revisions stemmed partly from the Supreme Court's May 2025 decision in Seven County Infrastructure Coalition v. Eagle County, which clarified that agencies generally must only consider the environmental effects of the project they are reviewing, rather than study indirect impacts beyond their authority.

NRECA filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the case urging the Supreme Court to clarify those limits.

The revised NEPA rules also incorporated provisions of the Fiscal Responsibility Act of 2023, including established review page limits.

“NEPA regulations that are concise, predictable, and reduce duplicative analysis and language allow federal agencies and Georgia Transmission to follow processes more efficiently," says Tasha Brooks, the co-op's group lead for siting and RUS compliance. “In a changing electrical industry, it also allows cooperatives like Georgia Transmission to meet less predictable project workload and scheduling requirements for new transmission facility projects."

Although NRECA was not directly involved with agency discussions on the Dresden-Talbot County project, its advocacy for more efficient regulatory reviews “paved the way for this type of alternative process to be developed," Brooks says.

More work to do

Along with progress on NEPA, NRECA's advocacy has helped unwind harmful regulations for co-ops in the past year, including a Bureau of Land Management conservation rule that hindered co-op activities on Forest Service land.

But the permitting landscape remains challenging, and NRECA continues to lobby Congress and agencies for more efficient and reasonable processes and regulations, including codifying recent agency actions to streamline permitting so that future administrations cannot simply reverse them.

The association supports additional NEPA reforms in the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act. The legislation would set time limits for filing legal challenges against permitting decisions and narrow the scope of required NEPA reviews, among other changes.

NRECA also backs the Promoting Efficient Review for Modern Infrastructure Today (PERMIT) Act, which would simplify Clean Water Act permitting, including by extending the length of CWA permits and codifying use of nationwide permits for electric transmission projects.

Both the SPEED Act and PERMIT Act passed the House in late 2025.

NRECA is also working to advance bills in Congress to streamline the Endangered Species Act and ease permitting of routine power plant maintenance and efficiency upgrades under the Clean Air Act.

“Reasonable and efficient permitting is essential to helping co-ops meet growing energy demand while maintaining environmental protections," NRECA Legislative Affairs Director Hannah Scott said. “NRECA continues to advocate for commonsense reforms that modernize federal environmental review and permitting processes so co-ops can build and maintain critical energy infrastructure projects on time and on budget.