The Bureau of Land Management has released a final plan to streamline solar development in the western U.S.
The Western Solar Plan makes 31 million acres of public lands open to solar development across 11 western states. It updates a 2012 plan that highlighted key areas for solar in the southwest and expands that analysis to Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
The BLM said it’s trying to meet clean energy targets while steering projects away from important environmental or cultural places.
That could help avoid conflict, said Ben Norris, the vice president of regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“We should generally see the permitting process and environmental review processes for these projects not necessarily take as much time,” he said.
Norris said some of the best landscapes for solar energy in the world lie on BLM land and he hopes the plan results in more large-scale development there. But he said it’s too early to anticipate the outcomes.
Under the proposed plan, projects either have to be within 15 miles of existing or planned transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands. There are also areas that are off-limits due to the environmental or cultural resources there. Additionally, projects are still required to go through regular environmental reviews.
“They have created a lot of flexibility for industry to look across the landscape for the areas that they're interested in,” said Josh Axelrod, a senior program advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “That is both good — and potentially problematic.”
Axelrod said the solar plan includes the tools to help BLM strike a balance between interests on the landscape, but whether it works could depend on how officials review specific projects.
On the other hand, Randi Spivak, the public lands policy director at Center for Biological Diversity, was disappointed by the plan. It opens more acreage to solar projects than the BLM originally proposed but doesn’t require they go on already-degraded lands.
“By opening up so many non-degraded lands — or, in other words, wildlife habitat — that puts in jeopardy for fragmentation and industrial development a lot, a lot of BLM land,” she said.
Spivak said her organization supports putting solar on public lands. But it plans on fighting to get projects excluded from additional locations important for biological diversity and recreation during the 30-day protest window.
The final proposed maps from the BLM for each state in the Western Solar Plan can be found on the project's planning page.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio, Boise State Public Radio in Idaho, KUNR in Nevada, KUNC in Colorado and KANW in New Mexico, with support from affiliate stations across the region. Funding for the Mountain West News Bureau is provided in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
