Our region is at the forefront of a new federal push for green energy. Officials were in Las Vegas recently announcing major projects they say will have a significant impact.
Among the new clean energy proposals is the Greenlink West Transmission Project, which will create a new system of transmission lines over hundreds of miles in Nevada. In the Silver State, there’s also the Bonanza and Libra Solar Projects. Combined they will help generate and store enough power for more than 5 million homes.
Ali Zaidi, the National Climate Advisor to the President, said in the past two years, the country has quadrupled its solar manufacturing capacity.
“2024,we will add more capacity to the U.S. grid than we have in two decades,” Zaidi said. “Ninety-seven percent of that will be clean energy, and solar dominates in that deployment.”
These projects will power the Western Interconnection grid, which includes several states as well as portions of Mexico and Canada. It also adds additional states: Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.
The Libra Solar project in Nevada is slated to break ground in October 2024 and be fully operational by the fall of 2027.
Significant changes to the Western Solar Plan were also proposed. The update would increase the number of acres allocated for solar projects by 40%. This opens more than 31 million acres of public lands across 11 Western states.
The Center for Biological Diversity said some of the locations are too close to sensitive areas. Some potentially harm plants and animals. Others could impact scenic locations like the Great Basin National Park in Nevada and The Great Salt Lake in Utah. Randi Spivak is the Center’s Policy Director.
“If the BLM hears that this plan needs some course correction to really make it right, I think that’ll be important,” said Randi Spivak, the policy director for the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Center for Biological diversity will submit a “protest” document detailing its proposed environmental safeguards. The BLM can incorporate or reject these before it issues its final decision.
This story was produced by the Mountain West News Bureau, a collaboration between Wyoming Public Media, Nevada Public Radio (KNPR) in Las Vegas, 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.
