Zero-Based Regulatory Budgeting To Unleash American Energy

In our country, laws are supposed to provide the certainty and order necessary to foster liberty and innovation. Instead, our vast regulatory structure often serves to constrict ordered liberty, not promote it. The United States Code itself is more than 60,000 pages. But unelected agency officials write most of the complex, legally binding rules on top of that, often stretching these statutory provisions beyond what the Congress enacted. In particular, the previous administration added more pages to the Federal Register than any other in history, with the result that the Code of Federal Regulations now approaches a staggering 200,000 pages. These regulations linger in such volume that serious reexamination seldom occurs. This regime of governance-by-regulator has imposed particularly severe costs on energy production, where innovation is critical. The net result is an energy landscape

For the purposes of this order: (a) ``Conditional Sunset Date'' means the date a regulation will cease to be effective and be removed from the Code of Federal Regulations, if the agency does not extend the Sunset Date pursuant to section 4(d) of this order. (b) ``Covered Agency'' means one of the agencies listed in section 3(a) of this order. (c) ``Covered Regulation'' means a regulation issued in whole or in part pursuant to a statutory authority listed in sections 3(b)-(j) of this order. (d) ``DOGE Team Lead'' means the leader of the DOGE Team at each agency as described in Executive Order 14158. (e) ``Regulation'' means each part, subpart, or individual provision of the Code of Federal Regulations promulgated under an agency rule as defined in 5 U.S.C. 551(4).

(a) This order applies to the following agencies and their subcomponents: the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); the Department of Energy (DoE); the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC); and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). It further applies to the following agency subcomponents: the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement (OSMRE), the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE), and the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), all within the Department of the Interior; [[Page 15644]] and the United States Army Corps of Engineers (ACE), within the United States Army. (b) For the DoE, this order applies to all regulations issued pursuant to the following statutes and any amendments thereto: (i) the Atomic Energy Act of 1954; (ii) the National Appliance

(a) To the extent consistent with applicable law, each of the Covered Agencies shall issue a sunset rule, effective not [[Page 15645]] later than September 30, 2025, that inserts a Conditional Sunset Date into each of their Covered Regulations. (b) The sunset rule shall provide that each Covered Regulation in effect on the date of this order shall have a Conditional Sunset Date of 1 year after the effective date of the sunset rule, subject to the process set forth in subsection (d) of this section. Unless the extension condition specified in subsection (d) of this section is satisfied, agencies will treat Covered Regulations as ceasing to be effective on that date for all purposes. An agency shall not take any action to enforce such an ineffective regulation and, to the maximum extent permitted by law, shall remove it from the Code of Federal Regulations. (c) In any new Covered

(a) Neither a determination to extend the Conditional Sunset Date of a particular regulation, nor a regulation that expires as a result this order, shall count towards the ten-for-one regulatory requirement in Executive Order 14192 of January 31, 2025 (Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation). (b) Agency heads shall coordinate with their DOGE Team Leads and the Office of Management and Budget to implement this order. (c) This order shall not apply to regulatory permitting regimes authorized by statute.