The White House is stepping up efforts to modernize permitting technology, unveiling a new tool designed to simplify the search for categorical exclusions across Federal agencies.
Today, the White House Council on Environmental Quality introduced the Categorical Exclusion Explorer (CE Explorer), a digital resource aimed at enhancing transparency and expediting environmental reviews and permitting processes. This tool provides a comprehensive public database detailing the categorical exclusions established by various Federal agencies under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). The CE Explorer is the inaugural product of the Permitting Innovation Center, launched in response to President Donald J. Trump’s directive, Updating Permitting Technology for the 21st Century, and aligns with the White House’s Permitting Technology Action Plan unveiled on May 30, 2025.
The CE Explorer’s search capabilities enable states, tribal authorities, project sponsors, and stakeholders to easily access information about Federal agencies’ categorical exclusions. This digitized, searchable inventory is expected to enhance coordination among agencies by allowing them to quickly pinpoint relevant exclusions established by their counterparts. Furthermore, this tool encourages the adoption of categorical exclusions by other agencies, a move supported by Congress in the 2023 amendments to NEPA, thereby accelerating the environmental review and permitting timeline.
The CE Explorer also offers data in a machine-readable format, empowering interested stakeholders to utilize this technological resource to enhance their own NEPA or permitting review processes.
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