This article looks like an international take on U. S. renewable energy development and has links to the new MOU among five federal departments (including USDA/Forest Service) and the Energy Policy Act of 2020. I was going to add this to Sharon’s recent post on renewable energy, but I wanted to highlight the planning implications.
This MOU implements the direction in 43 U.S.C. §§ 3001-3005, Pub. L. No. 116-260 (December 27, 2020), hereinafter “Energy Act of 2020.” Pursuant to the Energy Act of 2020, the Secretary established a National Renewable Energy Coordination Office (National RECO) within BLM Headquarters and five RECOs in the western States with responsibility to implement a program to improve Federal permit coordination for eligible “projects.”
It applies to “relevant aspects of Participating Agency coordination related to supporting activities for eligible projects—such as land use planning …,” which for the Forest Service it defines as “a land management plan approved, amended, or revised under section 6 of the FRRRPA (16 U.S.C. §1604).” (Applying this label to NFMA suggests pretty limited FS involvement.)
It requires a report to Congress identifying “outdated land use plans,” and requires BLM (but not the Forest Service) to “identify land use plans that may need to be amended as part of the decision-making process to consider eligible projects…” But maybe BLM will identify outdated Forest Service plans.
I hope this right hand of our government (a legacy from the prior administration) is talking to the left hand about where it wants to conserve 30% of the land.
AP story today..by Matthew Brown in the Associated Press, here’s a version via NBC News.
But without the climate bill, tax incentives to build large-scale solar will drop to 10 percent of a developer’s total capital costs by 2024, instead of rising to 30 percent, said Xiaojing Sun, head solar researcher at industry consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
Incentives for residential-scale solar would go away completely by 2024, she said.
“It will significantly slow down the growth of solar,” Sun said.
Many people wonder how solar can be cheapest and also require subsidies. But the answer to “without BBB” might be to pass a specific and targeted “renewable energy” bill. It also makes a person wonder things like “what is fair market value for federal land leases of a more or less permanent nature?” and “should biomass from fuel treatments have equivalent tax treatment?”
However, she added that streamlining access to federal land could help the industry, as large solar farms on non-federal lands face growing local opposition and cumbersome zoning laws.
And we all know that there are no problems with local opposition and cumbersome regulations on federal lands, so this should be easy.
The Bureau of Land Management oversees almost a quarter-billion acres of land, primarily in Western states. Agency director Tracy-Stone Manning said boosting renewable energy is now one of its top priorities.
Forty large-scale solar proposals in the West are under consideration, she said.
The agency in early December issued a draft plan to reduce rents and other fees paid by companies authorized to build wind and solar projects on public lands. Officials were unable to provide an estimate of how much money that could save developers.
In Nevada, where the federal government owns and manages more than 80% of the state’s land, large-scale solar projects have faced opposition from environmentalists concerned about harm to plants and animals in the sun- and windswept deserts.
Developers abandoned plans for what would have been the country’s largest solar panel installation earlier this year north of Las Vegas amid concerns from local residents. Environmentalists are fighting another solar project near the Nevada-California border that they claim could harm birds and desert tortoises.
Stone-Manning said solar projects on public lands are being sited to take environmental concerns into account.
The solar development zones were first proposed under the Obama administration, which in 2012 adopted plans to bring utility-scale solar energy projects to public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Officials have identified almost 1,400 square miles (3,500 square kilometers) of public land for potential leasing for solar power.
Here’s the link to the 2012 Solar PEIS if you want to see maps to all the states. Also, for Coloradans, here’s the comments for the 2011 meeting in Alamosa. It will be interesting to watch how this programmatic is used in site-specific approvals. Also, not sure why only the southwest was analyzed, the reasoning is probably buried in here somewhere. A quick look at the map and the county poverty maps in Colorado suggest that environmental justice concerns might come into play.. unless solar doesn’t evoke those concerns.
I think it would be interesting to get a map of full-scale solar and wind build out on federal, state and private lands before people got too involved in Wilderness-y designations for Biden Admin priority 30 x 30.
“We fully intend to meet our clean energy goals,” Haaland said. She said the Trump administration stalled clean energy by shuttering renewable energy offices at the Bureau of Land Management and undermining long-term agreements, such as a conservation plan tied to solar development in the California desert.
Retiree network scuttlebutt says there is indeed a great deal of pressure to get out these decisions at BLM, including some push to downplay environmental concerns. Should be interesting to watch how this goes, plus any “streamlining access” efforts.
The view east from the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site. Park advocates and members of the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, whose descendants were victims of the 1864 massacre, are concerned that a massive Xcel Energy project could infringe on the “cultural landscape” by placing towers and transmission lines in the viewshed. (Provided by Matt LeBlanc to the Colorado Sun)
The Colorado Sun has a story about wind turbine and power line development near historic sites, including Sand Creek, Camp Amache, and the Minidoka National Historic Site.
This article from Boise State Public Radio is about the Lava Ridge Energy Project which is on BLM land near the Minidoka National Historic Site. Conceivably different DOI agencies should be able to work this out.
This quote is about the Sand Creek Massacre site:
“It isn’t like any other national historic site, probably anywhere, because of the atrocities that went on there,” he said. “So when we as the tribes go back to the site, we’re going back to a place of sorrow, because that time era, and the massacre itself, was basically the beginning of historical trauma for our tribal people.
“When we go back to that site to reflect, to commemorate, to mourn, to try to heal,” he added, “seeing some big power lines there doesn’t help with that, aesthetically.”
The debate over how close is too close reflects a burgeoning issue nationwide as proposed construction of large-scale renewable energy projects like wind and solar arrays, key tools in the fight against climate change, bump sometimes uncomfortably against cultural landmarks.
……
And while she acknowledges that the NPS has no control over what happens beyond its borders, she notes that ever since Congress authorized the area as a national historic site in 2000, nothing has interfered with the cultural and educational experience.
“There were periods when it looked like oil and gas development was imminent, and large scale agriculture could make an impact on the viewshed,” Roberts said. “But none of that has happened in all these years.”
The National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit that describes its mission as protecting and preserving the nation’s parks, two weeks ago submitted a letter to the Colorado PUC, as well as Xcel’s siting consultant, laying out its concerns about the viewshed and communication with tribal interests. In addition to the Xcel project, the NPCA also is sensitive to potential wind power construction of towering turbines that rise higher than transmission towers, wrote NPCA Colorado senior program director Tracy Coppola.
Some park advocates recommend that transmission line towers — Xcel estimates the single-pole structures rising from 105 to 140 feet, depending on topography — should be at least 12 miles from its boundaries. In calculating that distance, the Sand Creek Massacre Foundation referenced a 2013 National Park Service-commissioned natural resource assessment, then adapted that report’s findings with regard to the viewshed to take into account the height of the towers.
Currently, Xcel said, it is evaluating locations for the new transmission lines 4 to 8 miles from the site’s boundary, but also will consider other options. “And that’s all part of our analysis,” said project manager Heather Brickey. “Our goal is to find the best route that meets the needs of the project and also meets the needs of the community.”
The NPS assessment identifies the cultural landscapes and viewshed as “fundamental resources and values for the site.”
“From a cultural and historical perspective, the views are not just about the scenery, but rather an important way to better understand the massacre at Sand Creek Massacre NHS,” the report said. “Visualizing the massacre as it played out on the landscape is a critical part of the visitor experience.”
Westlands Solar Park is being built on former farmland in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which many environmentalists see as preferable to renewable energy development on undisturbed landscapes. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Another excellent, comprehensive story from Sammy Roth of the LA Times. We’ve discussed the planning processes before, and see that Roth spoke with Mark Squillace. We discussed his planning ideas here and here.
But what about Biden’s other energy promise for America’s public lands — that his presidency would be a boon for the construction of solar and wind farms, which would create jobs and tax revenues and limit the need for fossil fuels?
The president’s track record there is mixed at best, at least so far.
I don’t know what “some climate advocates” expect.. the Biden Admin to ignore federal judges?
The Bureau of Land Management — which oversees nearly 250 million acres of public lands, or about one-tenth of the country’s surface area — has approved just one solar farm since Biden took office. It hasn’t approved a single wind farm. The agency has also signed off on three geothermal power plants, which can produce climate-friendly electricity around the clock.
For some perspective, I called up Peter Weiner, a San Francisco-based attorney who represents solar developers trying to get projects built on public lands across the West. Overall he had positive things to say about political appointees and career staff at the Bureau of Land Management, and their efforts to issue permits for renewable energy. He said he expects the agency to approve three more solar farms in the next month, all in California’s Riverside County, south of Joshua Tree National Park.
I asked Weiner whether he thinks the Biden administration is on track to meet a congressional target of permitting 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on federal lands by 2025. He thinks they’re behind, but he’s hopeful that approvals will start to come faster.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that things are going to change, but goddamn they’re slow to change,” he said.
What’s the holdup, exactly? Weiner pointed to staffing shortages spurred by President Trump’s half-baked plan to move Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Colorado, which led to an exodus of employees. Getting political appointees in place during the Biden administration’s first year hasn’t been a quick process, either. Weiner told me that when he’s talked with some of the president’s top appointees on public lands policy, he’s learned they have meetings scheduled every half-hour the entire day. How much can you get done when you’re spread that thin?” he asked.
I get that losing 200 out of 8000 employees could possibly mess things up.. but as far as I know, political appointees aren’t necessary to process permitting (perhaps to check on the final approvals and make sure they don’t irritate anyone politically important?) I also don’t know why “acting” politicals (which seem to have been there speedily following the election) couldn’t have done the same work. Perhaps BLM-ers out there can explain that? Or maybe Weiner is getting it wrong, and it’s just the standard processes are slow.
I also talked with Tom Vinson, vice president for federal regulatory affairs at the American Clean Power Assn., a trade group for solar and wind power companies. He said the challenges with building renewable energy on public lands predate the current administration, and it’s too much to expect Biden’s team to eliminate those obstacles in less than a year.
Still, Vinson is optimistic that changes are coming. He pointed out that the Bureau of Land Management recently issued a call for suggestions to improve renewable energy permitting, to which his group responded with several ideas for easing barriers. He also pointed out that, despite the small number of public lands projects the Biden administration has approved so far, federal officials are moving forward with the environmental analysis for at least wind one farm in Idaho, as well as several solar projects.
“They are trying to make projects work, both wind and solar. At the same time, they’re trying to improve the underlying process by which projects are permitted,” he said. “We are optimistic that they understand the potential for renewables on public lands, and want to capture that and recognize that there are barriers to doing so under the current rules.”
I should stop here and state that blindly approving every renewable energy facility a developer wants to build on public lands is not a good idea. As I’ve written previously, solar and wind farms can destroy sensitive ecosystems, which is one reason many clean energy advocates prefer rooftop solar panels to sprawling solar farms. There’s a difficult-to-navigate tension between building much-needed renewable power plants to prevent climate catastrophe and protecting biodiversity and wild landscapes.
The one solar farm the Biden administration has approved thus far — the 2,000-acre Crimson project in California’s Riverside County, which could include 350 megawatts of solar and 350 megawatts of battery storage — helps illustrate that tension.
Before the Interior Department signed off on Crimson, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a protest, arguing that officials had failed to adequately study possible harm to desert tortoises, Mojave fringe-toed lizards and other creatures, including fragmentation of their habitat. The conservation group Basin and Range Watch also protested. So did the Colorado River Indian Tribes, which cited potential damage to Indigenous archaeological sites and the importance of desert wildlife to tribal culture and religion.
Note that the convenient narrative that Tribes are against oil and gas but are for renewables, isn’t always true (not to speak of mining for minerals that renewables require). So renewable folks are going to have to work through the same involvement processes as everyone else… and that takes time. Unless it’s determined that renewable buildout is so important that various processes need to be speeded up. So 1) giving Tribes their rightful decision making authority, 2) protecting landscapes a la 30 x30, and 3) massively expanding renewables and 4) protecting T&E species (e.g. sage grouse) may not be an easy needle to thread.
Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School, suggested that smarter, more efficient federal land use planning could help get solar and wind farms built more quickly while minimizing environmental conflicts.
In a 2019 paper, Squillace proposed a new “layered planning” model in which the Bureau of Land Management would start by identifying its overall goals for an entire landscape — say, a watershed or wildlife corridor — and then work its way down to decisions about specific projects, such as a solar farm. That would cut down on cumbersome planning processes that can currently take a decade, while making it easier to assess the tradeoffs between renewable energy and conservation, Squillace told me.
“The current system is inefficient, and not necessarily the best, in terms of predicting the adverse impacts,” he said.
I reached out to the Biden administration for comment, asking the Interior Department what it has done to achieve Biden’s goal of promoting renewable energy on public lands and how they’d respond to criticism that they aren’t moving fast enough.
Tyler Cherry, the department’s press secretary, told me the Bureau of Land Management is currently processing applications for 36 solar projects, four wind projects and four geothermal projects, with preliminary review underway for an additional 64 solar and wind applications. He also pointed to the aforementioned call for suggestions on renewable energy permitting, saying officials are open to suggestions on issues such as the rent paid by developers and the amount of time it takes to process applications.
Squillace and I have had many discussions about FS planning and planning rules.. but I don’t see how landscape level planning would be less cumbersome and more “efficient.” What if all the landscape planning said “not here”? It seems to me anytime folks want to propose projects that other people don’t want, public involvement is some somewhat at odds with the concept of “efficiency” and speed. But perhaps there are ideas out there for how to do all three (involvement/collaboration, speed, required levels of analysis).
Lots of interesting stuff here. Roth says:
America’s public lands are a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, they’re an amazing refuge for hiking and camping. For many Westerners, they’re a source of economic sustenance thanks to oil and gas, timber or grazing. For others, they’re perfect for off-roading, hunting or fishing. For endangered wildlife on a heating planet, they’re some of the last best places to survive.
It’s probably not fair to ask these special places to help solve the climate crisis, too. But we may not have much choice.
It might be interesting to have a national programmatic EIS that looks at wind and solar on private and federal lands, plus other options (nuclear, geothermal) and including the effects of new transmission facilities, life cycle analysis of all environmental effects of the options, and so on. With input from all the experts and practitioners of all the energy options, as well as grid managers and experts. Fans of programmatics might like this idea.. or not.
On federal Tribal and/or private land- wind and solar buildout? From Wyoming News Now video
It seems like we have a bit of a puzzle with moving parts with federal lands issues these days.
1. 30 x 30, what exactly does that mean in terms of management of federal lands?
2. Massive build out of renewable energy/transmission currently prioritized by USG and States, but pushback on private lands (and some on federal). How will that play out on federal lands?
3. Tribes, what do they think about renewable buildout on their lands, how much say should they have over federal lands, and for federal decisions, what if different Tribes disagree?
This article talks about the pushback on private lands for wind and solar. Needless to say, I don’t particularly like the tone of the article (and the Sierra Club is not the only group that recommends extensive solar and wind buildout in rural America). As I’ve been following the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre project in Wyoming , the first permit was applied for in 2006, and there are no turbines yet .. and no litigation (half on federal). And yet, other large facilities are being built out, much more quickly, on private land in central and eastern Colorado, also helping family ranches economically. Here’s an example. Anyway, back to the pushback in some places.
A few weeks ago, I ran into a prominent employee of the Sierra Club who declared something to the effect of “we have to quit using coal, oil, and natural gas.” That, of course, is the official dogma of America’s “largest and most influential grassroots environmental organization.” The group says it is “committed to eliminating the use of fossil fuels, including coal, natural gas, and oil, as soon as possible. We must replace all fossil fuels with clean renewable energy, efficiency, and conservation.”
This same Sierra Clubber also expressed dismay about the difficulty of siting big renewable-energy projects and how they are being hindered by “NIMBYism.” Upon hearing this, I quickly interjected that I loathe that term, which, of course, is short for “not in my backyard.” I explained that everyone, everywhere, cares about what happens in their neighborhood, even out there in “flyover country” – that is, the places that are far away from the comfy confines of places like San Francisco, Princeton, Stanford, and other locales where fantasies about an all-renewable economy seem to proliferate.
I went on to introduce myself and explained that I have been tracking the issue of land use and renewables for many years. I explained that rural residents are objecting to wind projects because they don’t want to see the red-blinking lights atop those 50- or 60-story-high wind turbines, all night, every night, for the rest of their lives. They are also concerned — and rightly so — about the deleterious health effects of noise from the turbines, sleep disturbance, and potential decrease in their property values. I followed up by emailing this person — at their Sierra Club email address — a link to my April report for the Center of the American Experiment, “Not In Our Backyard,” which documents the widespread opposition to Big Wind and Big Solar in rural America. I included a link to the Renewable Energy Rejection Database. That database, which I have been maintaining myself, now lists 317 local communities or government entities from Maine to Hawaii, that have rejected or restricted wind projects in the US since 2015.
Then there are aspects of power and privilege, but also, say for rural Coloradans who want to lease their land (and are far from neighbors who might be impacted) why not? Will those working lands be countable as “conserved” under 30 x 30? “Cows yes, turbines no” or “cows no turbines no” or…?
The Sierra Club doesn’t want you to know about the rejection of the Fountain Wind project in Shasta County because that project provides another example of one of Big Wind’s favorite tactics: put the turbines where rich people ain’t.
Wind projects are never going to be built in places like Marin, Malibu, or Montauk. Folks in those places can afford to hire powerful lawyers and lobbyists. Instead, Big Wind always aims their projects at low-income counties where the opponents don’t have as much money to fight back. That’s true of Shasta County. Of the 58 counties in California, Shasta County ranks 46th in median household income. According to the Census Bureau, the median household income in Shasta County is about $54,700. That’s far less than the California average of about $75,200.
I think it might well be a good subject for social science research, why the people in, say, Limon Colorado (or Rush or …) might feel differently than the people in Shasta County. Who benefits and who loses, and how does that differ? Maybe we don’t need to build them everywhere.. maybe the poorer parts of the Great Plains have enough and can spare other parts of the country. My point being low income counties should have agency to accept or reject them. Just because a county is low income doesn’t mean we should overrule them in pursuit of higher moral goals (climate change) or say “they don’t really want it, they only need the money and if they were richer they’d reject, it too.” Of course if some people want it in the county and others don’t.. well that’s the tough work of local government.
On private land, we have the problem of (some) neighbors not liking industrialized landscapes (further from the turbines) or health effects (closer to the turbines) but the landowners can make some money from the leases. And they’re good for the climate. But say, if we had nuclear instead, we might not need them for the climate. It’s a larger puzzle of technical innovation and public acceptance moving parts. And then there’s new transmission lines.
Then there’s also this challenge with transmission (this Breakthrough Institute paper is about how permitting should be streamlined, (that would be the same kind of streamlining that in the eyes of some would be “leaving people out” and “not fully considering environmental impacts”:
A proposed 120-mile high-voltage transmission line stretching from Iowa to central Wisconsin — the 345-kilovolt Cardinal-Hickory Creek line — has met opposition from the public because developers cannot guarantee that only clean energy would flow down the line. Opponents contend that under federal law all types of generation have equal access to the line, and it would also likely be used to transmit power from coal and other fossil fuels. The same concern has been voiced for the proposed New England Clean Energy Connect transmission line, which will transmit hydropower from Canada to the Northeast. Environmental groups also strongly oppose the line over concerns about the environmental impact of the line itself, even though 72% of the line will be built along existing transmission routes. E&E News notes that “Opponents say the project would create environmental damage and hurt homegrown solar, wind and biomass projects in Maine.” But such concerns fail to note that more transmission will be required to bring more clean energy online in the first place, and fossil fuel generation won’t be displaced until cheaper sources are developed.
Well, I’m agnostic about the whole “which low carbon energy sources will win out in which timeframe.” And also “how much will ultimately happen on federal compared to private lands.” It should be interesting to watch, though.
A portion of Cross Mountain Ranch in northwest Colorado that is protected by a conservation easement. (Erik Glenn)
Reporter Sammy Roth of the LA Times has a newsletter called The Boiling Point. One of the things he writes about is the oncoming tension between conservation and renewable energy buildout. As TSW readers know, I’ve been following the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Farm in Wyoming as an example. It’s a very interesting story about the last holdouts and the generally white-hatted NRCS holding up the transmission line with a … conservation easement. It’s a great story IMHO and the Times has a firewall, so excuse the length.
“Way back in 2019, I asked an energy company owned by one of America’s richest individuals to alert me when they were down to one final landowner standing in the way of their plan to send massive amounts of wind power from Wyoming to California.
It had been a dozen years since Phil Anschutz first proposed to build the country’s largest wind farm, as well as a 730-mile transmission line to ferry the clean electricity toward the West Coast. Federal officials had signed off on the power-line route, but Anschutz Corp. still needed to work out financial arrangements with hundreds of private landowners whose properties the towers and wires would cross. I was interested in writing about the final holdout along the route, if the project got that far.
This week, company officials finally had an answer for me. They said the last landowner standing between California and an infusion of climate-friendly power will be a family of Colorado ranchers — working closely with a federal agency.
That’s right: Even as President Biden urges Congress to fund a rapid buildout of clean energy infrastructure to fight climate change, an arm of his administration is helping to block the country’s largest renewable power project.
It’s a conflict that illustrates the difficulty of quickly transitioning away from fossil fuels, especially given the opposition to solar farms, wind turbines and transmission lines that has bubbled up in communities across the West. That opposition is motivated at times by aesthetic concerns and at times by a desire to protect animals and ecosystems from industrial energy development.
Let’s back up a minute.
Anschutz got rich drilling for oil in the Intermountain West decades ago. Today he owns or holds major stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers, L.A.’s Staples Center and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. Forbes estimates his net worth at $10.1 billion.
Since 2008, Anschutz Corp. has spent more than $400 million permitting and preparing to build 1,000 wind turbines on a giant ranch in south-central Wyoming, as well as hundreds of miles of electric wires that would cross through Colorado, Utah and Nevada, ending near Las Vegas. As I’ve written previously, the wind in Wyoming peaks in the afternoon and stays strong into the evening, meaning it could help California keep the lights on after sundown — a challenge recently, as you may have heard.
It sounds like an easy win for California, Wyoming and our planet’s climate. But here’s where things get complicated.
A small handful of landowners are still haggling with Anschutz Corp. over how much they ought to be paid to allow TransWest Express to cross their properties. The company tells me it expects to be able to resolve its issues with every landowner except one: Cross Mountain Ranch, an enormous sheep and cattle operation in northwest Colorado.
Under normal circumstances, Anschutz Corp. might try to invoke eminent domain. But several years ago, the National Resources Conservation Service — an agency within the federal Department of Agriculture — spent $3.3 million to help fund a “conservation easement” across 16,000 acres of Cross Mountain Ranch. In exchange for that money, the landowning Boeddeker family agreed not to sell any of the ranch to a developer who might build homes (or anything else). Power lines wouldn’t be allowed.
Conservation easements are meant to preserve rural economies dependent on agriculture, while also protecting farm and ranch lands that provide wildlife habitat. At Cross Mountain Ranch, federal officials said an easement would support the greater sage grouse, an iconic Western bird whose sagebrush habitat has been decimated by residential and industrial development.
“This became quickly one of the highest-priority sage grouse initiative projects in the country, because of the size, the connectivity to the public lands,” said Erik Glenn, executive director of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Agricultural Land Trust, which helped broker the Cross Mountain Ranch easement. “It’s a pretty pivotal migration corridor for mule deer, for elk… You’re frequently going to see sandhill cranes along the Yampa and Little Snake rivers in their migration periods.”
Anschutz’s TransWest subsidiary sued the Department of Agriculture in 2019, arguing that the National Resources Conservation Service violated federal law and its own policies when it approved and funded an easement that would block the planned power line. The company wants a judge to throw out the easement. Department of Agriculture officials have countered that they followed the law and were totally in the right to prioritize conservation, regardless of how it might affect the energy project.
Here’s the key point:Regardless of who wins in court, this battle illustrates a tension that is only getting more pressing as America hurries to confront the fires and floods of the climate crisis.
I’m referring to the tension between building renewable energy infrastructure and protecting ecosystems, which I’ve written about extensively. President Biden wants the United States to get 100% of its electricity from climate-friendly power sources by 2035. He’s also endorsed a campaign by scientists and advocates to protect 30% of America’s lands and waters by 2030.
There are ways to meet both of those goals, and they most likely involve carefully studying which landscapes ought to be fully protected and which can be set aside for development. But those strategies won’t resolve every conflict. There will always be difficult value judgments about the appropriate balance between conservation and fighting climate change.
For Anschutz Corp., the facts on the ground at Cross Mountain Ranch clearly weigh in favor of climate. The company points out that its transmission-line corridor would take up just 30 acres of the 16,000-acre conservation easement, and would allow for the delivery of enough wind energy — 3,000 megawatts — to power nearly two million homes.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack — who served in that role under President Obama, and now again under Biden — has actually praised TransWest Express, along with six other power lines selected by the Obama administration for accelerated permitting a decade ago. Vilsack said the projects would “help to meet our country’s electric needs in the 21st century.”
“These infrastructure projects will also create jobs and opportunities that will strengthen our economy to benefit households and businesses throughout the country,” Vilsack said in a written statement in 2011.
I asked TransWest’s general counsel, Lisa Christian, about one arm of the Biden administration blocking a power line meant to help Western states ditch fossil fuels while most of the rest of the federal government pushes aggressive climate action. She was perplexed, to say the least, telling me the company has “tried repeatedly” to get Biden administration higher-ups to step in.
I also asked Glenn, from the Colorado land trust, whether sacrificing 30 acres out of 16,000 for a power line would really be that big a deal. He pointed me to research suggesting transmission infrastructure can harm sage grouse.
“We’ve got a policy priority of increased renewable energy, and we have a policy priority of increased conservation. Those two are going to continue to butt heads,” he said. “We have to find ways to resolve those conflicts.”
I also reached out to the owners of Cross Mountain Ranch. A 2017 Denver Post story described the property — which had been put on the market at the time, although it hasn’t sold — as “the rural family compound of the late Ronald Boeddeker, the Southern California real estate tycoon renowned for luxury developments like Lake Las Vegas and Waikoloa Beach Resort in Hawaii.”
Boeddeker’s son Matt didn’t respond to my interview requests. But he definitely opposes a transmission line. In a 2019 email cited by TransWest’s lawsuit, he wrote to a Natural Resources Conservation Service official that his family “agreed to permanently restrict (from development and for the protection of important wildlife) a very large part of one of the largest private ranches in Colorado in exchange for the govts part in full protection against power lines and other damaging items of development.”
“It’s impossible for this power line to happen if you take actions,” he wrote.
It’s hard for me to say if TransWest Express and the accompanying wind farm would really be canceled if the company’s lawsuit fails. Anschutz has spent hundreds of millions of dollars and a dozen years on these projects, and construction hasn’t even begun. I wouldn’t be surprised if he were willing to throw some more money and time at rerouting the power line.
I should note that the Department of Agriculture didn’t grant an interview request or respond to several questions I sent them.
I should also note that another company owned by one of America’s wealthiest individuals — the electric utility PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway empire — also wants to build a transmission line, known as Gateway South, along the same route through Cross Mountain Ranch as Anschutz. PacifiCorp has its own legal action pending over the conflict.”
Retired Smokey Bear commented about the proposed buildout of wind and solar in Virginia, which reminded me of the Princeton study. There’s a good New York Times article, which probably has a paywall but I included some maps and excerpts from there. You can check out the Princeton study itself here. It’s jam-packed with information of all kinds.
The Princeton study has several scenarios, and the maps here are based on the “Princeton Net-Zero America High Electrification scenario, which assumes that the United States will essentially phase out coal use and drastically reduce natural gas and oil use. The scenario also assumes the United States will use geologic sequestration to capture and store one metric gigaton of carbon each year by 2050. It also assumes there will be widespread adoption of electric vehicles in 2050 and high levels of building electrification.”
I believe you can scroll down on the maps to see your own part of the country, but I couldn’t figure out how. That’s why I’m using the NY Times maps below, for which wind is blue and solar is orange. Note that western forested areas in the PNW and northern California don’t have much to speak of, but for the interior West is looks like overlap with sage grouse terrain. Also note the midwest and east coast. It seems that the brunt of this buildout will not occur on the coasts (except offshore) so there could be an element of Coastalism that crops up as the buildout occurs (if it does). If you read the comments, it looks like many think alternatives are rooftop and along existing highways and other previously manipulated habitat. If you didn’t think decarbonizing is ultimately an engineering/construction practical problem, this discussion might lead you there. Or back to nuclear. Which reminds me of this effort in Wyoming, which is being built to access the infrastructure and workforce of an existing coal mine.
Wind and solar needed by 2050 (NY Times map)Solar and Wind today (from the NY Times)
Getting the permits
And back to our federal landscapes concerns.
Many of the places with the best sun and wind resources in the United States are on public land in the southwest and along the Rocky Mountains, so some energy will still need to come from remote areas in the West.
Getting approval to build on federal or state land can be a much longer process than what’s required for private land.
The Interior Department currently has a goal of approving permits for 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on federal land by 2025, but some of the Princeton models propose nearly five times that amount on public land in the coming decades.
How much energy is allowed on public land, and where projects are built, will depend on how the Biden Administration updates the solar and wind energy plans developed during the Obama administration. Those projects allow fast-tracked permitting for renewable projects on certain parcels of federal land for projects.
The existing plans, nearly a decade old, will need to be updated to account for advances in solar and wind technology that allow projects to be built on steeper terrain or to have less of an environmental impact.
Conservation
The question of whether to strictly conserve land for environmental purposes or make exceptions for clean energy is a thorny one.
Some species, like the desert tortoise andsage grouse, are being pushed to the brink of extinction by global warming and development, including oil and gas extraction, in their habitats. Without careful planning, adding vast solar panel arrays or hundreds of wind turbines where they live could push them over the edge. But so, too, could the continued burning of fossil fuels and rising global temperatures.
Renewable energy developers are required to conduct environmental impact studies and can sometimes offset the harm from new projects. A developer hoping to build wind turbines, for example, could pay to retrofit older, existing transmission lines in the area to make them safer for birds, balancing the toll on the species.
I think solar and wind installations are out for any 30 x 30 initiatives, so those efforts will also reduce the acres available. Perhaps it would make sense to start a national discussion now and delineate zones for solar and wind and transmission, and then start 30×30 ing.
Map by TSW of approved projects on federal lands. Note that they are permitted not operational. The link is below.
One of our many Anonymous friends asked the “how are environmental NGO’s dealing with solar and wind for federal lands?” Do they all agree?”
I’ve been collecting stories on this topic. I’m suspecting that the devil, as always lies in the details.. whether they agree with an individual project or not, not the general concept. Because in this case, at least to some groups, corporations will industrialize the landscape doing good things (providing low carbon energy) instead of bad things (providing higher carbon energy), so that’s conceptually good. Many groups use legal means to slow down or stop projects as a policy tool. It will be interesting to see if they can or do retool their policy levers to speed up favored projects.
Here’s some ideas that don’t seem particularly speedy from TWS with a cool map of existing infrastructure (see above):
Large renewable energy projects can disrupt wildlife habitat and harm wildlands if they’re not built in the right places. Since the early stages of renewable energy planning, we have learned important lessons about energy development that occurs at a large scale.
It’s encouraging to see an increase in renewable energy. The BLM has made great strides in building a responsible renewables program from scratch. Unfortunately, not all of the projects on this map are examples of this ‘smart from the start’ approach to developing energy on public lands. Mapping the BLM-approved projects does not mean that The Wilderness Society supports all of them. We simply hope to give readers a look at how much renewable energy has grown on public lands.
And here is how TWS wants BLM to do it:
SMART FROM THE START PLANNING
Find appropriate locations and ensure public input
Identify pre-screened, lower-impact zones for development and incentivize projects within them—using a process that prioritizes comprehensive tribal consultation and input from all stakeholders, especially local and traditionally underrepresented communities and Black, Indigenous and People of Color.
Protect irreplaceable wildlands
Avoid development in areas with important wildlife habitat, wildlands and cultural resources, and protect those areas.
Offset impacts
Offset impacts that can’t be avoided with investments in habitat restoration and protection.
We might ask “but how will BLM know what’s an “important” wildland versus a “run of the mill” wildland? What if it’s important to Juan, Bill and Letitia, but not to Shaundra, Eben and Porfirio? Will neighbors’ concerns matter more than those of others, or those of local elected officials? Is this another case where “the land is owned by everyone in the country so each person’s view should count equally?”
Here’s a Bobby McGill piece on ESA and the lesser prairie chicken (this is a private land issue but there is still some tension between environmental concerns and development; and the ESA provides a legal nexus for the feds to regulate private land).
A Biden administration proposal to list the lesser prairie-chicken as endangered in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico could stymie oil and gas development in the largest U.S. petroleum basin, environmental attorneys say.
And one warns it could devastate another energy source—wind power.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced the proposal to grant Endangered Species Act protection for the imperiled lesser prairie-chicken by listing it as endangered in the Permian Basin and threatened in a region centered on southwestern Kansas.
The May proposal is “at cross purposes with the Biden administration’s climate goals” to develop more renewable sources, said Brooke Marcus Wahlberg, a partner at Nossaman LLP in Austin.
An ESA listing for the lesser prairie-chicken could be devastating for the wind industry because the Fish and Wildlife Service is considering a possible mile-wide zone around each wind turbine within which the agency would assume the bird could no longer live, Wahlberg said.
Within that zone, wind developers would be held liable for “take,” a legal term for killing or harassing an imperiled species, Wahlberg said.
Escalating Costs
Developers can take steps to avoid take, or obtain a Fish and Wildlife Service permit to take an endangered species, as long as they employ mitigation measures that protect the animals.
If the service finds that wind developers are eroding the prairie-chicken’s habitat, they could participate in “existing conservation programs,” or meet with agency officials to discuss other options, Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Clay Nichols said, speaking through an agency spokesperson.
The Texas Panhandle on the edge of the Permian Basin is one of the country’s most productive regions for wind energy. Though the basin itself isn’t a hub for wind development, wind development is occurring close to the New Mexico-Texas border.
But avoiding or mitigating take comes at a high cost for developers.
“You end up having significant acreage that is now unusable,” Wahlberg said. “You’re in this place where the service is saying your take is reaching out to these lengths, or you’re getting a permit where your impacts estimates are so high your mitigation costs are just outrageous.”
….
But private conservation efforts have done little to halt the prairie-chicken’s decline, and ESA protections will help to save it while allowing oil drilling to continue, said Jason Rylander, senor ESA counsel for Defenders of Wildlife, an environmental group.
“There is no question in my mind it needs full protection of the Endangered Species Act,” Rylander said. “I think the important thing to remember is the ESA is a flexible tool that protects species and habitat but rarely stops development.”
For an example of authorized take (in this case of golden eagles) for wind turbines check out this USFWS site:
This wind development-environmental conflict map can be found here https://wgfd.wyo.gov/Habitat/Habitat-Information/Wind-Energy-Development. You can click on it to make it larger.
A story by Angus Thuermer in Wyofile: I like how G&F used their experience with existing installations to develop a process; maybe other states can benefit? I also like the pre-monitoring and possible ongoing adaptive management.
The guidelines seek early engagement with developers and at least two years of wildlife monitoring before they break ground. By working with developers even when they’re selecting a location, impacts can be minimized, said Amanda Losch, the agency habitat protection program supervisor.
“We really wanted to clarify a process where we had a lot of communication and touch points … so there’s constantly a back and forth,” she said. “For us, it’s all about having open lines of communication.”…
A new section fleshes out what the agency wants in post-construction monitoring plans. The new guidelines also expand on the role of technical advisory panels for each project.
“In this document, there’s more information on who should be on it, what should they be doing,” Losch said.
Thuermer also had a round-up of some impacts with links to studies:
Development of industrial-scale renewable energy projects could be wildlife managers’ next challenge as consumer demand and federal policies favor them over fossil fuels. Wyoming is the top state for potential wind development, the Wyoming Energy Authority states.
Energy companies have developed 1,816 megawatts of wind power production capacity in Wyoming and are building another 4,341, according to the American Wind Energy Association. The wind farms are affecting wildlife.
Recent research suggests pronghorn antelope shy away from turbines on their winter range. “We found evidence that pronghorn avoided wind turbines in winters after development within their winter home ranges,” authors stated in the abstract of a 2020 scientific paper. They acknowledged the topic needs more study.
Before adoption of the new guidelines, Game and Fish already was recommending that the Industrial Siting Council allow no wind development in critical “core” greater sage grouse areas “without clear demonstration … that the activity will not cause a decline in sage grouse populations.”
A five-year study of 346 telemetry-tagged female grouse comparing undeveloped area to a wind farm detected that they were less likely to select brood-rearing and summer habitat in disturbed areas.
There’s also worry about turbine blades killing birds and bats. The first phase of the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project south of Rawlins, for example, is expected to kill two bald eagles and 14 golden eagles a year, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Power Company of Wyoming LLC is developing that 1,000-turbine, 3,000-megawatt field across 320,000 acres on the private Overland Trail Cattle Company Ranch. The USFWS calculation of the turbines’ toll on eagles applied to the development of only the first 500 turbines, expected to be erected starting in 2022.
Sounds like the next act in the Sage Grouse Drama may introduce new characters…
This shows the DOT Dashboard for the Chokecherry-Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project.Leslie Watson wondered about the regulation that revised Fast-41 to include the mining industry.
She said “In reviewing Fast 41 requirements, it in not quite clear to me on how the Jan 8 2021 revised rule will be implemented and if a mining project (such as Stibnite Gold Project) are included under Fast 41, what changes for agency staff and applicants?”
Fast-41 Rule; revised to include mining industry
The origin of Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act was to “improve the timeliness, predictability, and transparency of the Federal environmental review and authorization process for covered infrastructure projects.” Eligible projects under the statute are those subject to NEPA, over a $200M investment and are not included under other abbreviated authorization or environmental review processes. The Jan 8 2021 rule includes the mining industry projects as defined by the permitting council and consistent with E.O. 13807, “Establishing Discipline and Accountability in the Environmental Review and Permitting Process for Infrastructure Projects,” and E.O. 13817, “A Federal Strategy to Ensure Secure and Reliable Supplies of Critical Minerals.”
Guidance for the Coordinated Project Plan from the permitting council (May 26, 2020 https://www.permits.performance.gov/fpisc-content/fast-41-process#whatiscpp) include the following:
The Coordinated Project Plan (CPP) is a tailored roadmap to the permitting process, developed by Federal agencies in partnership with the project sponsor. In developing the CPP, agencies collaborate to establish:
• Roles and responsibilities for all entities with permitting responsibilities
• A permitting schedule with interim and final milestones, with potential focus areas for additional interagency coordination noted
• Potential avoidance, minimization, and mitigation strategies
• Plans and a schedule for public and tribal outreach and coordination
She asks “Would mining project proposed for inclusion under the Fast 41 program develop a CCP to submit to the lead federal agency for the project along with a Plan of Operations?”
It sounds to me from a brief review that the developer would choose to opt in (here are the pros and cons according to one law firm). Then the Lead Agency would initiate the CPP. Possibly the FS would be the lead agency; I’m not clear when BLM is the lead on minerals.
Here’s a roadmap of the coordination process. The Forest Service has its own website about FAST41 here.
This might sound pretty specialized, but with the Biden Administration potentially encouraging many new wind and solar installations plus the necessary transmission lines on federal lands, we may all become more familiar with FAST41 and using it for projects.
