This story is part of a Grist package examining how President Trump’s first 100 days in office have reshaped climate and environmental policy in the U.S., and is made possible through a partnership with Grist and Interlochen Public Radio in Northern Michigan.

When President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency on his first day in office, he directed the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to use emergency permitting for projects to boost energy supplies, including oil, natural gas, uranium, coal, biofuels, geothermal heat, hydropower, and critical minerals.

Doing so effectively created a new class of emergency permit to fast track energy projects across the country. But environmental advocates worry this will harm the ability of the public to weigh in on projects that will contribute to climate change and harm sensitive ecosystems.

Speeding up permitting for high-profile proposals will likely gain attention and trigger lawsuits, said David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the nonprofit Environmental Integrity Project. But he worries that under the order, there will be less scrutiny paid to less well-known projects.

“The one thing that is clear is they’re cutting back,” he said. “They’re shortening the amount of time for public comment.” 

Three laws grant the Army Corps authority to permit projects that impact wetlands and waters, including assessing their environmental effects: the Clean Water Act, the Rivers and Harbors Act, and the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act.

The agency typically uses emergency permitting for projects that prevent risk to human life, property, or of unexpected and significant economic hardship, such as rebuilding infrastructure after a hurricane. Creating emergency procedures to address energy supplies is new. And according to Bookbinder, it’s illegal.

The corps has allowed the president to amend its regulation without going through the required process, he said, “And the president can’t do that.”

Emergency procedures will be determined by each Army Corps district, a process Bookbinder called “rather opaque.” For instance, he said, it’s not clear whether or how the corps will go through the environmental analysis required by the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA. The landmark 1970 law requires the federal government to account for environmental impacts before permitting a project, and is sometimes the only opportunity for people to weigh in on projects that will affect them. 

This is part of a much larger effort to increase energy production, including through drilling and mining; last week the Interior Department announced it would fast-track such projects on public lands. The Trump administration has also moved to unravel and decentralize how NEPA is implemented.

Doug Garman, a spokesperson with the agency headquarters, said in an email the Army Corps is still required to comply with “all applicable laws and regulations,” including NEPA, and that “coordination of these reviews will be subject to the emergency declared under [the executive order.]”

Garman said current regulations do allow the agency to respond to the declared emergency in this manner.

Concrete changes are already taking place. Two Clean Water Act permits for Texas projects — that the corps designated as emergencies — now have shortened comment periods lasting less than two weeks: the Texas Connector pipeline supplying Port Arthur liquefied natural gas and the Rio Grande liquefied natural gas ship channel. 

The Army Corps also announced it will speed up its review of a contentious tunnel under the Great Lakes that would house a section of the Line 5 pipeline, which carries oil and natural gas liquids from Wisconsin to Ontario. The 72-year-old pipeline currently runs about four miles underwater in the straits between lakes Michigan and Huron. 

Shane McCoy, a regulatory branch chief with the corps’ Detroit District, told reporters the emergency procedures “truncated” its timeline but that they weren’t “eliminating any of the steps” in the process. The corps said the project qualifies as an emergency and that a faster review will allow it “to address an energy supply situation” which would risk life, property, and unexpected and significant economic hardship. 

The pipeline’s owner, Canada-based Enbridge, first applied for a federal permit to build the tunnel in 2020. It says doing so would make the pipeline safer by reducing the risk of an oil spill and calls it “critical energy infrastructure.” 

But the permitting process had been deeply flawed even before it had been fast tracked, according to seven tribal nations in Michigan that withdrew from federal talks on the tunnel. 

“The Straits of Mackinac is spiritually, culturally, and economically vital to Tribal Nations,” tribal leaders wrote in a letter to the corps, saying that the agency’s environmental review process “disregards this deep place-based connection and instead seems designed to ensure that oil — and its associated threats — will continue to exist throughout the treaty ceded territory, including in the Great Lakes and the Straits.”

The decision to speed up that review was the “final straw,” according to Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community.

“We will continue to defend the rights of the Great Lakes. See you in court,” she said in an emailed statement after the change was announced. 

There’s also the matter of the energy emergency itself. The executive order holds that the country’s “insufficient energy production, transportation, refining, and generation constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to our Nation’s economy, national security, and foreign policy.” But many energy experts have said that isn’t accurate, adding to numerous legal questions surrounding the order. 

Under former President Joe Biden, the United States produced record amounts of oil and gas, and remained the world’s largest liquid natural gas exporter, though that administration cut back on leasing federal lands for drilling and slowed some gas exports. 

The White House did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

“Overall, our production levels for fossil fuels were quite high,” said David Spence, a professor of energy law at the University of Texas at Austin. “So on the oil and gas side of things, to the extent that the Trump administration wants to increase production, it’s going to be incremental at best because the market will only take as much as the market wants, and we were doing a pretty good job of satisfying that demand beforehand.”

Faster permitting will likely benefit individual projects, Spence said, along with oil companies and exporters of products like liquefied natural gas.

While Trump’s executive order doesn’t directly mention wind or solar, it implied that such energy made the grid unreliable. It also includes critical minerals in its push for domestic extraction — minerals used in renewable technologies. Spence said the supply of critical minerals is less secure because the U.S. relies on foreign imports. “If that’s what the emergency is aimed at, then you can sort of make that case with more of a straight face.” 

Still, he said in an email, “I generally think that ‘energy independence’ is a silly idea. Trade happens because it benefits both parties. Getting in the way of that takes away those benefits.”

Editor’s note: Enbridge is among IPR’s financial sponsors. Financial sponsors have no influence on IPR’s news coverage.