The federal government is looking at ways to boost solar energy output in the Southwestern United States. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has identified 24 tracts of land to determine if they are viable for development of solar energy. In Colorado, the BLM is looking at 21,000 acres in the San Luis Valley, located in southern Colorado. Ana Panoka of NPR affiliate KCFR interviewed Ray Brady, an energy policy manager with the BLM, regarding plans for developing the tracts for solar energy. Brady said that most of the areas the BLM is considering do not overlap with oil and gas exploration. According to the interview, the BLM will begin with environmental analysis (which will be available online) of the various sites before deciding to accept applications or bids for solar development.

At the end of last month, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar (former U.S. Senator from Colorado-D) and U.S. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada-D) announced “‘Fast-Track’ initiatives for solar energy development on Western Lands”. The BLM issued a press release with details of the program. As of now, they have received more than 470 applications for renewable energy projects. “Those include 158 active solar applications, covering 1.8 million acres, with a projected capacity to generate 97,000 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough to power 29 million homes, the equivalent of 29 percent of the nation’s household electrical consumption.” For maps of the areas being considered across California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Nevada, click here.

According to the BLM’s homepage,

“[t]he dry, sun-drenched desert areas of the southwestern United States hold enormous potential for large-scale deployment of solar energy facilities and systems. Solar energy can be used to generate electricity, monitor ecosystem conditions, pump water for livestock, and provide lighting and communications in remote desert areas. Today, 354-megawatt parabolic trough solar thermal power plants in California’s Mojave Desert generate electricity for the power grid. Contracts for energy produced by these plants provide power to about 380,000 homes.

Colorado has only one pending application for renewable energy on public land as compared to thirty-eight in Arizona, and seven in New Mexico. Arizona and California have the highest solar potential areas and are closer to load demand centers (Southern California, Phoenix metropolitan area) and existing transmission lines. Centralized energy production and long distance transmission does not represent a viable energy policy. Instead, each region must use the local resources that are most convenient and plentiful, make the most sense to use, and are sustainable. The proximity of solar energy capacity to major metropolitan areas of the west exemplifies the types of projects that the country needs to develop.

- Eric Wilson

[image source: BLM]