The EPA just killed one of Biden’s favorite tricks for blocking American energy.
The agency unveiled a new memorandum Wednesday aiming to promote “common sense, transparency, and clarity” when reviewing other agencies’ Environmental Impact Statements — ending the practice of using sprawling comment letters to stall projects the previous administration didn’t like.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA reviews all draft environmental impact statements prepared by other federal agencies. Biden’s EPA weaponized this process, deploying “unhelpful and expansive comment letters that went well beyond EPA’s statutory authorities to stymie unfavored projects,” according to an EPA news release obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“Previous administrations have sometimes misused this process… which sometimes resulted in confusion and costly delays.”
The EPA claims Biden-era comment letters promoted “far-left objectives that had nothing to do with EPA’s statutory responsibilities” — including “advancing ‘environmental justice,’ ‘net-zero’ climate policies, and remedies for ‘historical injustices.'”
One example: Biden’s EPA sent a sixteen-page comment letter to the Interior Department regarding a coal mine project critical to domestic energy supply, opining about climate change, noise, and the widely discredited concept of the social cost of greenhouse gases.
The result? Confusion and costly delays for projects trying to power America.
“EPA’s environmental expertise is most valuable when it is clear, consistent, and delivered early in the process,” EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi told the DCNF. “This memo helps EPA get actionable feedback to other federal agencies and project sponsors when it matters most — without wasting taxpayer resources analyzing topics that are outside of EPA’s authority.”
The new memo refocuses EPA comment letters on “potential human health or environmental impacts from proposed projects” — not climate activism or social justice crusades.
Trump’s administration has been pushing federal permitting reform across the board. In May 2025, the White House announced a permitting technology “action plan” to modernize environmental review processes for roads, bridges, mines, factories, and power plants.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a July 2025 post the administration wants to “ensure companies investing BILLIONS into the US can do so with a permitting process that takes less time, costs less money, and comes with more certainty.”
The EPA’s move is the latest step in unwinding Biden’s regulatory blockade on American infrastructure and energy development.
