BIGSOLAR’SFOOTPRINTONPUBLICLANDS
[Wemustdo]everythingwecantoputthebulls‐eyeonthedevelopmentof solarenergyonourpubliclands.
‐InteriorSecretaryKenSalazar
1
The public lands that all American citizens hold in common are a unique manifestation of our history and values. They also have historically been a battleground of the competing intereststhat lie along the spectrum between preservation and exploitation.Ultimately, the concept of “multiple use” on public lands iswell established and generally accepted to be the enduringpolicy. Public lands serve many, often incompatible needs anduses, including recreation, both mechanized and muscle-powered; wildlife habitat; mineral extraction; timber production; livestock grazing; watershed protection, and oiland gas development. Indeed, the major mission of the Bureauof Land Management (BLM), which oversees vast areas of land in the western U.S., is to oversee and issue permits, leases,and rights of way for commercial uses of public land.Controversies over BLM-managed public land largely revolvearound the tension between the agency’s utilitarian andconservation missions.In the past few years, the government has shown new interestin advancing “renewable,” non-fossil-fuel energy, through wind, solar, and geothermalgeneration. A key aspect of the policy is the assumption that much of this will occur on federalpublic lands managed by the BLM. The 2005 Energy Policy Act called for the development of technology to deliver an additional 10,000 MW of renewable energy from public lands by 2015.
2
More recently, both the scope of proposed renewable energy development and the level of financial and political commitment have increased rapidly. Shortly before taking office,president-elect Obama called for a doubling of renewable energy production by 2012.The rush for renewables is also driven from the state level, where states have establishedRenewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) dictating increasing percentages of power be derived from
1
Galbraith, Kate. New measures to aid solar on public lands. New York Times “Green” blog, June 29, 2009.
2
Public Law 109-58. It should be noted that the Act did not mandate such development, but expressed the “sense of Congress” that it “should” occur. This is notable because references to the Act’s 10,000 MW “mandate” are rife.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar
SolarDoneRight2
renewable sources by certain dates. California, for example, has a 20 percent RPS by the end of 2010 and 33 percent by the end of 2020.Both the Administration and the Democrats in Congress favor programs to streamline and rampup solar development on public land. S. 1642, a bill introduced in 2009 by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) sought to speed the permitting process by centralizing permits in one officeper state and establish a pilot program of renewable energy projects where competitive biddingwould be used for applicants to obtain leases of public land.In late 2009, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced a bill that would also have centralizedpermitting and fast-tracked some solar projects.
3
While aimed mostly at a specific area of theCalifornia Desert, Feinstein’s bill was the first to include provisions that would distribute someof the proceeds from solar project leases on public lands to the state and county where the projectis located.This concept of distributing proceeds locally was also included in two subsequent bills sponsoredby Senator Harry Reid and Rep. Dean Heller of Nevada.
4
In addition, one of the Reid-Heller billsset a 60-day deadline for the issuance of leases within a pilot project area in one county inNevada.No major legislation has yet been introduced in the 112
th
Congress pertaining to large-scale solar development. Clearly, however, expediting solar development on public land is an easy call for many policymakers. There is little hesitation to at least rhetorically commit whole swaths of public land to this purpose.It is not inconsistent with existing policies that large solar power-generating facilities should beproposed on public lands, particularly since vast areas of open space— with high and largelyuninterrupted daytime insolation (sunlight intensity and duration)—are in the desert Southwest,where public land ownership is very high.When lawmakers and business interests turn to public lands for utilitarian purposes, however, themany non-utilitarian values of the land can be easily forgotten or discounted. What wasrecognized yesterday as treasured open space may now be perceived simply as empty real estate.
3
The main purpose of Feinstein’s bill, S. 2921, was to designate national monuments in areas of the Californiadesert where large private holdings had been acquired for the public through donation and privately-fundedpurchase. Some solar applications have been submitted in these areas, and Feinstein sought to move those projectsoutside the proposed national monuments, then expedite their processing as compensation for relocating them. Thelatest version of the bill, introduced at the beginning of the 112
th
Congress, no longer includes the provisions thatwould have expedited solar developments.
4
The American Solar Energy Pilot Leasing Act of 2010, HR 5508/ S. 3482 and the Clean Energy, CommunityInvestment, and Wildlife Conservation Act, HR 5735/ S. 3587.
PublicLands3
Too easily and too often, policy-makers turn to public land as a cash-cow, a warehouse, or aliquid asset. In lean times, proposals to sell off public land will always arise, and big schemes areproposed to make use of land that seems to be wasted if it is not “in use.”With 253 million acres in BLM-managed lands alone, it may seem that the public lands, andtheir potential for use, are endless. Yet much of this area is already damaged or fragmented bymining, urban encroachment, oil and gas operations, livestock grazing, motorized recreation, andother uses. Large, contiguous areas that retain their ecological integrity are increasingly rare:these are some of the areas most acutely threatened by large-scale uses such as industrial solar.Both the climate crisis and our acute need to find alternative energy sources are relatively newphenomena; the headlong rush to make use of every square inch of public land is not. We mustfind a way to address the former without perpetuating the latter.
CurrentProjects
The scale, intensity, and duration of impacts introduced by industrial solar are massive. Solar plants are proposed to be sited on public land for which the developer rents a right-of-way.However, unlike the typical right-of-way issued by the BLM— where a buried pipeline or anabove-ground transmission line has a limited footprint that does not preclude other uses—industrial solar plants comprise near-total coverage (and total land-use conversion) on thesites they occupy.The average utility-scale solar plant will occupy 5,000 acres, just shy of 8 square miles.Although leased rather than sold to the developer outright, the site will be utterly transformed,completely converted to its industrial use, will no longer serve non-industrial functions, and willbe off-limits to the public. In essence, public land used for these plants is no longer public.Moreover, even beyond the 30- to 50-year duration of “virtual privatization” (the averagelifetime of the projects), conversion to industrial use is probably permanent. The environmentalimpacts are likely to be such that restoration to or recovery of previous ecological functioncannot occur. The sites may be permanently relegated to industrial uses. Having been stripped of the special qualities and functions we value in public lands, they will in effect become privateindustrial land.In addition to the rights-of-way for the plants themselves, many miles of transmission lines willbe proposed to carry the energy. Because it is not known which solar projects will ultimately beapproved and constructed, the transmission-line mileage cannot be quantified. However, adecision on federal plans for energy corridors to be designated in the 11 western states (for
Search History:
Result 00 of 00
00 results for result for
p.
Recommended
More From This User
Notes
Load more
