Sheila McCafferty Harvey

The Trump administration’s directive instructs the Council on Environmental Quality to implement technological reforms and establish a unified federal system to conduct environmental reviews and evaluate permits.

Takeaways The final regulations retain the general framework of the proposed regulations, with some important modifications based upon comments from industry members. The acquisition and retirement of energy attribute certificates will remain the method to establish emissions associated with hydrogen production, but the final regulations provide additional flexibility with respect to at least two of the associated “three-pillar” requirements—incrementality and temporal matching.

[co-author: Richard Mroz] The decision signals potential new scrutiny for co-located energy generation and data center projects as concerns grow about grid impacts. Takeaways Although decided primarily on procedural grounds, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) decision points to increased regulatory scrutiny on large co-located energy users as policymakers adapt to rapid demand growth from data centers driven by AI development.