PNNL

Clearing the path for critical infrastructure

For over 50 years, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) has required agencies to conduct environmental reviews and document the potential impacts of proposed actions. Along with NEPA, there are other key laws, such as Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, National Historic Preservation Act, which also shape environmental review and permitting processes of energy and infrastructure projects.

Gathering the documents that support these reviews and permitting decisions requires collecting information from a range of sources, making the process time-consuming and costly. 

What is PermitAI^TM?

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is building a one-stop data platform offering public datasets and artificial intelligence (AI) modules as shared services to streamline environmental review and permitting process for critical federal infrastructure. PermitAI combines a broad focus on the federal NEPA process across all technology projects with a targeted expansion to other federal and state permitting processes for specific energy technologies.

• PermitAI™ develops the AI-ready data foundation needed to host and manage environmental review and permitting documents across federal agencies. This improves research into past NEPA reviews and helps inform current projects. Its planned expansion will include the PermitTEC datasets to support analysis of permitting decisions at the federal, state and local levels, including those involving geothermal energy and critical minerals.
• Powered by specialized AI systems, PermitAI offers capabilities for searching and analyzing environmental review documents, organizing public comments, drafting environmental reviews, tracking public engagement opportunities, preparing categorical exclusion evaluations, reviewing regulatory requirements, and supporting legal analysis. Designed as reusable modules and available as services, these capabilities support faster, more informed permitting decisions while reducing delays and costs.  

The PermitAI project is funded by the Department of Energy's Office of Policy, Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation and Integrated Energy System Office, as well as the Permitting Council. 

How can AI streamline environmental permitting?

Leveraging the expertise of the Department of Energy and national laboratories, PNNL is developing dataset and AI modules and delivering these capabilities as services to help improve environmental reviews and permitting across the federal government.

The foundation of these capabilities is a collection of data products, including NEPA decision documents and other permitting datasets, drawing on historical environmental reviews and permitting documents containing millions of pages and billions of words. Building on these resources, PNNL is developing and testing AI modules and services that users can integrate into their existing workflows to accelerate individual tasks and support broader permitting workflows. The datasets and services are designed to help users:

• Instantly recall and reference relevant environmental reviews (e.g., environmental impact statements, environmental assessments, categorical exclusions) and permitting documents in new projects and provide summaries of key conclusions and data from those reviews.
• Rapidly discover, evaluate, and compare information that would be difficult or even impossible to locate through traditional research methods
• Automate rote, repetitive workflows in the following ways:
  • Performing an initial review of correspondences and categorization of comments (e.g., from the public, other federal agencies, Tribal leaders, and industry), allowing subject matter experts to begin addressing the substance of comments as soon as they are received.
  • Retrieving and organizing environmental data and project information from applicant documentation and authoritative external sources to help experts draft NEPA documents with source citations to support verification and further analysis.
  • Highlighting and checking citations in NEPA documents against current regulatory sources and suggesting traceable updates for user review.
  • Assisting experts in screening projects to identify potentially applicable categorical exclusions under NEPA.

These capabilities support, not replace, the expert review and decision-making process. 

How PermitAI™ applies AI to the permit review process

Data Collection, Enrichment, Management, and Governance

PermitAI™ is building standardized AI -ready data products from historical NEPA reviews and other federal and state permitting documents specific to certain energy technologies to improve overall quality, access and interoperability of data. These resources connect project information, regulatory requirements, review processes, decision documents, and geographic data. By capturing how projects navigate permitting in practice, PermitAI complements regulatory frameworks with insights into real-world pathways, supporting research, analysis, and AI capability development. 

AI Tools and Shared Service Development and Deployment

The PermitAI™ team works with permitting experts and users across agencies to identify workflow challenges where AI can provide meaningful support.  The team develops and evaluates customized AI tools and offers them as shared services designed for integration into users’ existing workflows, and platforms. Demonstration interfaces showcase these capabilities and help gather feedback to improve reliability and usability. These efforts support government agencies, Tribal governments, academia, and other users while preserving expert oversight and agency decision-making authority. 

Contact Us

Have questions about PermitAI™? Want to share your work in this space? Email us at permitai@pnnl.gov with questions, feedback, or general inquiries.