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Page added on October 14, 2012
US ‘Solar Zones’ in Place, Ready for Big Projects
The Obama administration on Friday gave final approval to a plan that opens up 285,000 acres in 17 zones in six Western states for streamlined utility-scale solar power development. The Department of the Interior said the fast-track sites are “characterized by excellent solar resources, good energy transmission potential, and relatively low conflict with biological, cultural and historic resources.”
The Programmatic Impact Statement (PEIS) for solar energy development doesn’t limit such power plants to the solar energy zones, but the benefits to siting projects in them will be substantial. The government’s major land caretaker, the Bureau of Land Manaagment, has committed to “facilitating faster and easier permitting in the SEZs, improving and facilitating mitigation, facilitating permitting of needed transmission to the SEZs, encouraging solar development on suitable adjacent nonfederal lands, and providing economic incentives for development in SEZs.”
image via BrightSource Energy
The Department of the Interior said that if fully built out, solar projects in the zones could produce some 23,700 megawatts of electricity, enough to power around 7 million American homes.
Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar signed the Record of Decision codifying the plan in Las Vegas on Friday, joined there by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), proving that even in the face of a recalcitrant Congress, the executive branch has tools to make things happen.
“Energy from sources like wind and solar have doubled since the President took office, and with today’s milestone, we are laying a sustainable foundation to keep expanding our nation’s domestic energy resources,” Salazar said in a statement. “This historic initiative provides a roadmap for landscape-level planning that will lead to faster, smarter utility-scale solar development on public lands and reflects President Obama’s commitment to grow American made energy and create jobs.”
image via the White House
There are zones in six states, but that’s a little bit misleading: Of the 285,000 acres, more than half – 147,910 – are in California’s Riverside County, which borders Orange County on its western flank and then stretches all the way east across the Mojave and Colorado deserts to Arizona.
Pre-Obama, no big solar energy projects had been permitted on public lands. But according to the Interior Department, under Obama 33 renewable energy projects have been approved for construction on or involving public lands, including 18 solar plants, seven wind farms and eight geothermal plants. In May, the first of those big projects – Enbridge Silver State North, a 50-megawatt solar PV array 40 miles south of Las Vegas – went online.
11 Comments on "US ‘Solar Zones’ in Place, Ready for Big Projects"
BillT on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 2:27 pm
And who owns these plants on taxpayer land?
Big corporations, of course!
Who will profit?
Big corporations of course.
Who will pay?
YOU! (Of course!)
If they fail you will also pay.
Better you put a system on your roof and then you benefit totally.
PrestonSturges on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 2:34 pm
It would take shockingly little land area to use solar to generate the United States electricity – probably less land than is now siting in western military bases. And it could be distributed along roadsides and right of ways spanning thousands of miles.
Compare that to the amount of land destroyed by strip mining and mountain top removal, which has consumed and area the size of Delaware.
DC on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 2:42 pm
I wonder if as much attention is being given to home or local based systems, as opposed to mega-scale ones? I hear its the case that many US jurisdictions still actively hinder and block solar at the individual level though various means. In any event, amerika is such a mess in terms of its unsustainable cities. Crumbling urban area one hand, and toxic, ugly suburbia on the other. Solar cant save suburbia, even if every roof were wired yesterday for it. Yes, it might reduce the load on the current system if that were the case, but the US many for-profit private power utils wouldnt care for that one bit. This may help in part, explain why all those juicy glut of chinese solar panels arent getting where they are needed most. But again, even if they did, its not really clear they would address the underlying problem. Namely fossil-fueled car dependent towns and cities. Solar is a useful and viable technology, but in North Americas case, it cant fix the problem that corporate rule here has created.
MrEnergyCzar on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 3:17 pm
Too little too late… Bill T is right, home based system is better, less transmission losses…
MrEnergyCzar
Norm on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 8:04 pm
if you put the solar panels on your roof, then it burn your house down cause of pure DC can arc uncontrollably.
so the better choice is probably a utility-scale installation. what U guys got against that, its a good approach and Obama admin is setting it up.
Gotta hurry and elect Romney, so that the repub’s will shut down anything that isn’t coal oil or nuclear.
PrestonSturges on Sun, 14th Oct 2012 8:16 pm
It’s true that home based systems would be better, but manufacturers want the economies of scale and profits from big installations, and they want to lock in a contract price at the beginning of production.
In a very real sense, these big operations subsidize the development of materials that will be used by the homeowner.
After all, solar cell arrays are scalable. They are not like huge hydroelectric turbines that are of no use to the homeowner.
BillT on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 1:02 am
Preston, the big corporations only want to control you and make big profits for their owners. They have zero incentive to make your freedom from them easier. I.e. the tariff on solar panels from China.
Why worry about efficiency improvements at all? The boys in China are ahead of the Us in most fields now anyway. They don’t have ‘for profit’ Capitalism holding everything back like in the Us.
And, Norm, if you park your cars in a garage attached to your house, is that any safer? How about the 220V. service coming into your electrical panel? That natural gas stove in your kitchen or that natural gas furnace in your basement? You are typical of Americans who want the corporations to own you and run your life forever so you don’t have to think.
EarthProjects.info on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 3:44 am
This is good. But the major problem right now is peak oil which started in 2005 and will continue till 2015. After 2015 we will see a decline in oil production. Transportation and industry (frieght shipping, esp) are the top two oil guzzlers. Elecyric mass transportation rail systems for cities and intercity transport linked to railroads that ate linked to our breadbasket rural ag areas. Thar is where we need to be, if not to move people, then to move food from rural to urban areas.
Hear the company paid $1billion a year by all the top oil companies and OPEC to tell them how much oil they have in their fields. This company does the laboratory analtsis if rock and fluid samples from oil wells for 1100 out if the 4000 oil fields around the world. The company is Core Laboratories and is based in Netherlands with 70 offices worldwide. If anyone knows how much oil is out there, how much can be reyrieved and when production will go into decline, it is these people.
http://youtube.com/user/earthchannelprojects
Or here. http://earthprojects.info
Or here ://twitter.com/earth_projects
Arthur on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 10:23 am
Although privately owned solar panels are to be preferred over state owned, the advantage of large state/corporate run projects is that it will enable solar producers towards economy of scale which will result in downward push on prices. I would say: “go US, go”.
Arthur on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 10:27 am
PrestonSturges, indeed. It takes ‘merely’ a virtual France or Spain (550,000km2) in the Sahara, stuffed with panels, to power the entire world.
http://landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127
Kenz300 on Mon, 15th Oct 2012 1:51 pm
Any transition away from fossil fuels to safe, clean alternative energy sources is a good one.