New Bill Allows President to Waive Air Pollution Rules for Chip and Mineral Plants in the Name of National Security

The “Air Permitting Improvements to Protect National Security Act of 2025” is a direct attempt to speed up the construction of facilities deemed vital for U.S. supply chains—specifically, semiconductor manufacturing and critical mineral processing. It does this by creating two new ways for these facilities to bypass or alter the standard air pollution offset requirements currently mandated under the Clean Air Act.

The National Security Fast Pass

This is the biggest change. The bill creates a National Security Waiver that allows the President to completely waive the requirement for these critical facilities to offset their increased air pollution. Under current law, if a major new factory is built or modified, it must secure offsets—meaning it has to reduce pollution elsewhere to balance out its new emissions. This bill allows the President to eliminate that step entirely, provided they determine the waiver is in the “national security interests of the United States.” This determination cannot be delegated to anyone else, concentrating significant power in one office. If you live near a proposed chip plant, this provision means the air quality protections designed to keep new pollution in check could be completely removed overnight, solely based on a national security declaration.

The Pay-to-Pollute Option

If the President doesn’t grant a full waiver, the bill offers a second path: Alternative Offset Requirements. If a critical manufacturing or mineral facility can demonstrate to the state permitting authority that it has made a reasonable effort but simply cannot find enough traditional offsets, the state must allow them to use an alternative. This alternative can be an innovative measure to reduce emissions or, more simply, an emissions fee. This is essentially a “buyout” of the offset requirement. The fee is capped at 1.5 times the average cost of pollution control measures in that area over the past three years. The state must then use that fee money to maximize emissions reductions elsewhere in the area.

What This Means for Your Commute and Your Wallet

For the average person, this bill is a classic trade-off between economic security and environmental protection. On one hand, the bill aims to accelerate domestic production of semiconductors (the chips in your phone, car, and appliances) and critical minerals (used in batteries and defense technology). This is good for supply chain resilience and potentially good for high-tech jobs. The facilities that benefit are narrowly defined as those focused on manufacturing semiconductors or processing critical minerals.

On the other hand, the core mechanism of the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review program—ensuring that new sources of pollution don’t make local air quality worse—is being weakened. If a facility uses the fee option, the money collected might not be used quickly enough, or effectively enough, to counteract the new pollution being pumped out. If the President grants a full waiver, there is no immediate offset at all. For communities living downwind of these new or expanded factories, this could mean an increase in localized air pollution, potentially leading to higher rates of asthma or other respiratory issues, without the required environmental safeguards in place. It’s a regulatory shortcut that gets the factory built faster, but shifts the environmental cost onto the local community.