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Despite the Biden administration’s public support for carbon capture and sequestration (“CCS”), we saw neither faster CCS permit approvals from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) nor a significant push towards state primary enforcement authority (“primacy”) during the former president’s tenure.

On February 19, 2025, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) released a pre-publication version of an interim final rule (the “Interim Rule”) to rescind all of CEQ’s previous and current regulations implementing the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) alongside a memorandum (the “Memo”) to federal agencies providing guidance on how agencies should revise their individual NEPA regulations and how they should manage NEPA reviews in the meantime.

In his first two days in office, newly inaugurated President Donald J. Trump signed a flurry of Executive Orders, including several aimed at supporting the traditional energy industry.

After little more than a week in office, there is still plenty of speculation, but priorities of the Trump 2.0 Administration are becoming more concrete.

On May 1, 2024, the Council on Environmental Quality (“CEQ”) published the final version of Phase 2 of its National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) rulemaking (“Phase 2 Rule”).

Carbon capture and sequestration (“CCS”) projects represent a critical pillar in many companies’ strategies to navigate the low-carbon transition.

Federal agencies are required to conduct assessments under the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) before taking “major federal actions,” such as granting permits needed for infrastructure projects and for certain other necessary approvals for both traditional and renewable energy projects.

Welcome to Vinson & Elkins’ Securities and ESG Updates.

Environmental Justice (“EJ”) continues to be a strong focus of both the federal and state governments with two major developments occurring in the past two weeks.

At long last, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (“EPA”) is poised to grant Louisiana authority to issue Class VI permits under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act’s (“SDWA”) Underground Injection Control (“UIC”) program for long-term carbon capture and sequestration (“CCS”).

Welcome to Vinson & Elkins’ Securities and ESG Updates.

Environmental Justice (“EJ”) continued to prove a major focus of the Biden administration in 2022. With wide-ranging initiatives across several federal agencies, the administration worked to strengthen enforcement, release new tools and data, issue new guidance policies and memoranda, and create national offices, among other key actions.