Home Secretary Deb Haaland and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Land and Minerals Management Laura Daniel-Davis recently announced the Government’s new efforts to support the development of solar energy on public lands in the West and help meet the country’s ambitious renewable energy and energy targets achieve environmental protection.
As an agency within the US Department of the Interior, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will develop an updated plan to guide responsible solar development activities on public lands through an updated Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) based on the 2012 release. The 2012 Solar PEIS identified Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah as states with high solar potential and low resource conflicts to guide responsible solar development. Now, in 2022, the BLM will add more states, adjust exclusion criteria, and seek to identify new or expanded areas to prioritize solar deployment.
Meanwhile, the BLM is initiating reviews for three proposed solar projects on public land in Arizona with an estimated combined capacity of over 1 GW. These are the proposed utility-scale 600MW Jove Solar project in southeastern La Paz County, the 250MW Pinyon Solar project in Maricopa County, and the 300MW Elisabeth Solar project in Yuma County.
Our review of these proposed Arizona projects and a new analysis of the role public lands can play in promoting solar energy production will help ensure we maintain momentum to build a clean energy future, lower costs for families and achieve robust environmental results on the nation’s lands and waters.
– said State Secretary Haaland in an opinion.
“We take seriously our responsibility to steward the nation’s public lands responsibly and with a view to the increasing impact of the climate crisis. The power and potential of the clean energy future is an undeniable and critical part of this work,” said Assistant Principal Assistant Secretary Daniel-Davis.
A notice to update the Solar-PEIS 2012 will be published in federal register in this week. A 60-day public comment period begins.
In addition, BLM is currently working on 65 utility scale onshore clean energy projects being proposed on public lands in the West with a combined potential capacity of over 31,000 MW.
To further address the solar energy growth bottleneck in the US, both the public and private sectors are exploring various land resources and investigating various ways to accelerate the deployment of solar energy. Solar on closed landfills has developed into another growth segment. The EPA has seen an 80 percent increase in landfill solar projects between 2015 and 2020.