By Keaton Peters

30 August 2024

In the vast desert northeast of Las Vegas, a new solar installation will soon be assembled atop an ancient lake bed. The Dry Lake East Energy Center, a 200-megawatt solar installation with 600 megawatts of on-site battery storage, was cleared to begin construction this week by the Bureau of Land Management.

In planning documents, Boulevard Associates LLC, a subsidiary of NextEra Energy Resources, said the solar plant and 200 megawatts of attached battery storage will be in operation in December 2026. An additional 400-megawatt stand-alone battery is set to come online in 2028.

The solar and storage installation is the latest renewable energy project to be approved on public land. Since 2021, the U.S. Interior Department has approved more than 7 gigawatts of new clean energy capacity on public land in the form of solar arrays, geothermal plants, and new transmission lines to bring clean power from where it’s produced to the population centers that need it. As of this month, there are 60 projects currently under review with a total capacity of more than 29 gigawatts.

A large portion of the Western U.S. is public land managed by BLM, and historically some of this space has been leased for oil and gas extraction and mining purposes. The Biden administration has sought to open these lands to renewable energy development as part of its effort to rid the power grid of carbon pollution by 2035. In April, BLM finalized a new rule lowering fees for wind and solar projects seeking to lease federal lands, and just yesterday it announced a plan to expand solar development on public lands.

The rush to develop clean energy projects on public lands has at times pitted the interests of the industry against local conservation organizations looking to preserve natural biomes and hunting grounds.

“For those of us who really care about biodiversity, we feel that the agencies are taking too much of the advice of the developers,” said Kevin Emmerich, a co-founder of the environmental group Basin and Range Watch and a retired National Park Service worker.

Emmerich is among a handful of Nevadans who submitted public comments against the Dry Lake East Energy Center as part of the review process required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Emmerich and others expressed concerns about the impact on habitats of animals such as bighorn sheep and desert tortoises.

Clean energy advocates, citing the urgent need to shift from fossil fuels to clean energy, have argued that the current permitting process is too cumbersome and slows down the pace of development.

Get Caught Up

Solar and batteries are helping Texas weather heat waves. Here’s how.

+ more stories

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get Canary's daily newsletter and stay on top of our latest headlines.

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement

“We’re thrilled to see that this project has been permitted,” Heather Reams, executive director of the nonprofit Citizens for Responsible Energy Solutions, told Canary Media. ?“In Nevada, where the sun shines a whole lot, it’s great to harness that energy and use it for keeping the lights on,” she said, adding that locating projects on public land is necessary for Nevada because so much of the state’s land — more than 80 percent — is federally owned.

The Bureau of Land Management’s proposed Western Solar Plan, released Thursday, is meant to strike a balance between preserving public lands and streamlining the permitting process for solar.

The proposed plan applies to most federal land in California and all federal land in 10 other Western states, including Nevada. If enacted, it would bar solar development on 131 million acres of public land and leave more than 31 million acres open to development. A 30-day public comment period has started for BLM to gather input on the plan before issuing a final decision.

The plan prohibits solar development on BLM land that is more than 15 miles from existing or planned transmission lines, except if the proposed solar facility would be located in an area that has been designated as ?“previously disturbed,” such as an old mining site. Within the 15-mile radius of transmission lines, certain exclusions may still prohibit solar from being built, such as if the area is designated for recreation or conservation or as an endangered species habitat.

The steps in the permitting process remain the same, but by clearly defining where solar is and is not allowed, BLM hopes to speed up initial reviews. The agency is also updating suggested design features that make projects more amenable to the environment, which, if utilized by developers, could make for easier approval.

The proposed plan has garnered mixed reactions from the industry. In a statement, the clean energy trade group American Clean Power Association praised the updated design features but said it is ?“concerned” that many areas are excluded where solar could be built ?“in ways compatible with resource protection.”

The association stated its intent to work with the agency to ?“reduce unnecessary regulatory hurdles that hamper development of clean energy resources on public lands.”

For its part, the Dry Lake East Energy Center is set to be built on more than 1,000 acres within a zone that BLM has already designated for solar energy. There are other solar installations, a gas-fired power plant, and a substation nearby to connect power to the grid.

Still, the opposition faced at even this location shows the delicate balance between development and conservation that building clean energy on public lands will require.