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Government Power United States

US Government Opens 22 Million Acres of Federal Lands To Solar 106

Posted by BeauHD from the maximum-flexibility dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: The Biden administration has updated the roadmap for solar development to 22 million acres of federal lands in the US West. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory have determined that 700,000 acres of federal lands will be needed for solar farms over the next 20 years, so BLM recommended 22 million acres to give "maximum flexibility" to help the US reach its net zero by 2035 power sector goal. The plan is an update of the Bureau of Land Management's 2012 Western Solar Plan, which originally identified areas for solar development in six states -- Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.

The updated roadmap refines the analysis in the original six states and expands to five more states -- Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. It also focuses on lands within 10 miles of existing or planned transmission lines and moves away from lands with sensitive resources. [...] BLM under the Biden administration has approved 47 clean energy projects and permitted 11,236 megawatts (MW) of wind, solar, and geothermal energy on public lands, enough to power more than 3.5 million homes. Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said in response to BLM's announced Western Solar Plan updates: "The proposal ... identifies 200,000 acres of land near transmission infrastructure, helping to correct an important oversight and streamline solar development. Under the current policy, there are at least 80 million acres of federal lands open to oil and gas development, which is 100 times the amount of public land available for solar. BLM's proposal is a big step in the right direction and recognizes the key role solar plays in our energy economy."
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US Government Opens 22 Million Acres of Federal Lands To Solar More

US Government Opens 22 Million Acres of Federal Lands To Solar

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  • we've certainly got the land for it (Score:5, Interesting)

    by v1 ( 525388 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @12:32AM (#64174485) Homepage Journal

    Billions of acres of desert land in the west, sounds like an ideal place for solar. And can just crank it up to 115kv and send it anywhere on the US grid. Except for most of Texas of course, because they love their independence.

    • Doesn't it have to be near transmission lines? Isn't that the main issue?

      • Doesn't it have to be near transmission lines? Isn't that the main issue?

        There are already big transmission lines across the Mojave (CA and NV).

        There are also big transmission lines across northern Arizona and New Mexico.

        The Mojave is the best location for solar because it has a higher altitude (lower temps and brighter sun) and is further west, so it helps to fill the late afternoon peaks in consumption.

    • As long as you can easily get rid of the dust and keep daytime temperature low, it is golden. I'll gladly copy your solution for my semi-desert installation if it is a good one.

      / Not a snark

      • Re:we've certainly got the land for it (Score:5, Informative)

        by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @02:48AM (#64174569)

        As long as you can easily get rid of the dust

        Dust becomes electrostatically charged. There's already in lab methods of passing a small AC current to act as repulsion for dust. The issue that remains with a lot of the solutions is coatings that the interdigitated electrodes don't impure the substrate that makes water impingement an issue, as repulsed dust does help the issue, but doesn't completely reduce water removal of dust.

        However the current solutions are indeed ideal for locations where moisture is not a concern like Mars and are usually employed for this particular use, especially lunar landings that need to repeal the highly charged lunar regolith.

        There are a couple of folks out there who are working on tin-copper in thin few nanometer thick layers to address the issue. I recently read that one was able to prevent 95% of the ambient moisture from entering the lower layers in 30% or less humidity climates, which deserts sort of fit into that here on Earth. So yeah, it's not quite there, but folks are working on the dust thing.

        • One technique is to fly quadcopter drones over the panels after a dust storm.

          The rotor wash from the drones will blow the dust off the panels.

          • Maybe fit the panels with a compressed air powered blower bar and cycle them when efficiency drops. Or simple roller brushes, if the surface is sturdy enough.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by v1 ( 525388 )

            That works for awhile, but eventually the fine dust sticks and starts to accumulate. Then, the only way to get it off requires physical contact. (usually washing, even with a water spray - which can also be done with drones

            I've seen some panel designs that include automatic washers, though I don't know if that ends up better or worse than drone maintenance. (or just plain people rotating through them with a squeegee)

        • Thanks. In my area, it just somehow turns to oily dirt. Rain helps, but then it is a location without much of that...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Chas ( 5144 )

      Simply because something is a desert doesn't mean there isn't a living biome there or that simply burying it under endless acres of solar panels won't cause damage.

      • Re:we've certainly got the land for it (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @07:10AM (#64174755)

        Simply because something is a desert doesn't mean there isn't a living biome there

        America has 500 million acres of desert.

        The plan is to use 700,000 acres for solar.

        That is 0.14%.

        There will be plenty of desert left for the lizards.

        or that simply burying it under endless acres of solar panels won't cause damage.

        The panels are spaced so they catch about half the sunlight. The rest reaches the ground. Plant life in the desert is limited by water, not light, so the 50% shade boosts growth. Many desert species thrive under the panels.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by nevermindme ( 912672 )
          Strangly there was not enough desert for cattle or nuclear waste.... now when it is the left....they say build the road.

        • There will be plenty of desert left for the lizards.

          Most of them are in Washington and Hollywood anyway, so it's not a big deal.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Most lizards and insects don't really LIKE extremely high temperatures, they can just tolerate them well. I would expect that unless they take steps to prevent it, the area under the solar panels will be relatively intensely populated.

      • Re:we've certainly got the land for it (Score:5, Insightful)

        by alvinrod ( 889928 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @10:33AM (#64174895)
        Unless you're proposing humanity forego any kind of power generation entirely, anything is going to have some environmental impact. Even if we have some major fission breakthrough, you still need to put the reactor somewhere.

        It may mean that there's some loss of habitat for species that live in the desert, but that's always going to happen regardless of source. Coal requires mining. Wind turbines won't bother ground species much, but will disrupt birds. Hydro means dams and affects fish that live in the rivers. Even if you're extracting uranium from sea water so you don't need to mine it, nuclear will still have some leftover waste that needs storage.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Their habitats will be disrupted by climate change anyway, so anything that lessens that is probably a net benefit.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Chas ( 5144 )

            Okay. Kill yourself.

            Seriously.

            You're an unending source of climate altering greenhouse gas.

            "And "ANYTHING" that lessens that is probably a net benefit."

            Right?

            This is why blind belief is such a stupid benchmark.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Britain has found that the area under solar panels tends to become a home for insects. It's not at all clear that this would lessen the habitability of the area. In a desert, shade is a precious commodity.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Chas ( 5144 )

            Because you disturb the environment putting the equipment in in the first place.
            Possibly killing existing life in the area and stripping out the habitat. HOPING you're right and new life moves back in.

        • Unless you're proposing humanity forego any kind of power generation entirely, anything is going to have some environmental impact. Even if we have some major fission breakthrough, you still need to put the reactor somewhere.

          The comment you are replying to is NOT trying to stop the idea, they are trying to encourage the people choosing the locations to not merely think of deserts as empty sand and that you can not just drop anything you want anywhere you want in the desert and have a good outcome.

          There are plenty of wastelands out there where nothing really grows, such as above the timberline on the tops of mountains. They are called wastelands, not deserts... even if some of them are considered desert.

    • Where do I start protesting?

    • Yes, we Texans do indeed love our independence. And we have more solar power than any other state.

      https://www.governing.com/infr... [governing.com].

      We have our own deserts and plenty of open land for solar and wind farms.

      Texas also has 3x more wind power than any other state. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

      Despite its reputation as an oil state (which is deserved), Texas is also the green energy leader in the US.

    • A concern I have is that there should be a mandate that all solar farms in remote areas be dark - as in no night time lighting at all. There is a compulsion by all facility builders that the facility, even if unmanned, must be brightly lit at night. There is no reason why a solar farm needs any lights at night, none. Keep people out? Build a fence with motion detectors. Install infrared cameras if you like, they are cheap. If you need to send someone around the place at night bring the light with them, or h

    • Putting solar panels in the desert would make sense if it were empty, but it's not. Instead, it is an ecosystem which stores a third of the world’s soil carbon. Killing it to achieve the goal of becoming cleaner doesn't make sense. It's no different than clear cutting huge swaths of old growth forest to replace dirty concrete roads with redwood planks. Well, except in this case the forest never will be able to regenerate because they're covered by big sheets of plastic that will need to be replaced ev

    • Billions of acres of desert land in the west, sounds like an ideal place for solar.

      It does sound that way ... until you realize the Southwest deserts, such as the Sonora Desert are NOT mostly empty sand. If you kill off those things, then deserts really will be empty and LOTS of dust storms will bring on new economic challenges.

  • 100 times (Score:5, Interesting)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @04:29AM (#64174651)

    Under the current policy, there are at least 80 million acres of federal lands open to oil and gas development, which is 100 times the amount of public land available for solar.

    Just let that sink in for a moment. That alone should tell us just how little commitment to weaning itself off of fossil fuels the USA has.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 )

      Maybe because cutting out oil/gas before a replacement is in place would be stupid?

      Has your country stopped importing oil/gas? No? Cut back on imports? No?

      Ok then. The America bashing is hypocritical and boring.

      Show us it's done! Lead the way!

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Actually, yes. Let's take Germany as an example. Their coal and gas consumption has been falling. Why hasn't yours?

        • Let's be honest; if Germanys' gas use fell, it was because a certain someone blew up a certain pipeline, and the price of gas rose to ridiculous and unaffordable levels, impacting industry and residents alike. Not because solar and wind replaced it.

      • Yeah, OK. Spain has more high-speed rail than every country except for China. It's also relatively cheap & if you travel along the same route regularly, it's free (special "bono" offer to encourage people to switch from driving or flying). Local (electric) commuter trains have been similarly incentivised. So far it's succeeded in significantly reducing road traffic & people are pleased with the ease & comfort of getting around without driving.

        Also, they've passed a law that says all new homes

        • My turn at what? I asked if your country has zeroed or significantly cut back on imported gas/oil.

          Instead you tell me Spain has electric trains powered by what? Where does the electricity come from?
          And home buyers get solar water tanks instead of gas/electric tanks. *eye roll*

          If you had a point you failed to make it.

          Here are some pesky facts about Spain's oil use rising for a few years in a row.

          https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

          • You're arguing that Spain's transitioning away from dependence on fossil fuels, increasing mass-transportation use, & substantially reducing per capita energy consumption, while at the same time reducing transport costs, & has decreased its fossil fuel energy use by ~10% in the last 10 years, isn't relevant.

            Can you see how using the sun to heat water directly is more efficient than fossil fuels or water heaters & that makes a substantial difference overall? Or that increasing train use (long,

    • It does have a huge head start

    • That's not apples to apples. Oil extraction dots the landscape with a well and a tank here and there, and generally leaving out sizeable hills and outcroppings - here's an example [fractracker.org]. On BLM land the public can still access the trails and roads in the area, go hunting, whatever.

      A solar field is more like building a warehouse on the acreage it covers. There's a fence around the area, and the public loses access to the land, like this [insideclimatenews.org].

      Now, I'm not saying oil is somehow more sustainable than solar. But equ

      • Assuming you can completely ignore the impact of fracking to achieve maximum output from the well. Just because you can't see the underground environmental damage doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
      • Oil & gas extraction pollutes everything around it, for miles.
    • Remove Alaska from the solar and oil numbers and you will find very little public land in the 48 states to developed gas and oil. Honestly with drilling tequniues the environmental impact of oil exploration is beyond the wellhead, but the NIMBYs have no understanding of the problems already mitigated in modern oil and gas production.

    • "Open" to drilling is pointless if the administration refuses to actually issue leases to permit the drilling:

      President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed a series of executive orders that prioritize climate change across all levels of government and put the U.S. on track to curb planet-warming carbon emissions.

      Biden's orders direct the secretary of the Interior Department to halt new oil and natural gas leases on public lands and waters, and begin a thorough review of existing permits for fossil fuel development.

      Source: https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2021/... [cnbc.com]

    • If you put all solar panels end to end, leaving no gaps that shipped to the US in 2023 youâ(TM)d get to about 12000 acres. Triple the imports to get to 40,000 acres. You MAYBE get to 60,000 acres as you take the entire world supply of solar panels. You are talking 1M acre for the Biden proposal, demand scales exponentially with area, we need 100x more solar panels than currently produced on earth, let alone the 20M acres they opened up.

  • You protect federal land. Trees, growth will have to be cut for the solar farms !!!

    • By destroying the land we are saving the environment.

  • Why the northern states. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jarik C-Bol ( 894741 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @09:22AM (#64174837)
    Selecting the northern states makes little sense to me. It is mid winter here, and I can say from direct experience, we get less than 6 hours of usable sunlight this time of year, and lots of snow. We use solar panels on a few remote water wells, and they are fine in the summer, but in winter it requires snowplows to go out to them and remove snow, regularly. And that is if the sun is out. Otherwise, a gas generator has to be used. If it was not so cost prohibitive to have these wells on the grid, we absolutely would. (Remote locations, far from existing power lines) Installing large scale solar farms in this environment, where half the year there us little sunlight, and even higher maintenance requirements to use what little sunlight we get, seems hilariously wasteful of solar panels.

  • So... (Score:2)

    by kenh ( 9056 )

    We can't poke a hole in the ground and extract oil from the ground, but we can cover it with solar panels (or mirrors pointing at tower)? You know, you can remove an oil rig when the well runs dry, but solar farms will require hard scraping the acres under the solar panels (mirrors), altering the federal land.

  • This seems insanely wasteful (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Sethra ( 55187 ) on Saturday January 20, 2024 @11:25AM (#64174991)

    If you're planning out 20 years you're going to see considerably more benefit to building nuclear plants which consume a tiny fraction of that land and can operate 24/7 without destroying 22 million acres of habitat.

    There's also the tiny issue of servicing those panels at such a vast scale - solar isn't "set and forget". Those panels need to be maintained / repaired along with all of its support infrastructure.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by diaz ( 816483 )

      If you're planning out 20 years you're going to see considerably more benefit to building nuclear plants which consume a tiny fraction of that land and can operate 24/7 without destroying 22 million acres of habitat.

      There's also the tiny issue of servicing those panels at such a vast scale - solar isn't "set and forget". Those panels need to be maintained / repaired along with all of its support infrastructure.

      Are you implying that nuclear is "set and forget"?

    • Those panels need to be maintained / repaired along with all of its support infrastructure.

      Hurray! We finally have a use for all those dullards who can't write code or act rationally in a society!

      Oh wait. Right, we don't care about those people. It costs too much to maintain solar. Let's do something else like burn more coal and oil.

  • Ironically, this is more damaging to the actual local environment than opening up land to drilling.

  • Whatâ(TM)s the eco impact on creating a warmer shaded environment for the native species? Plants will die. Animals that feed on them have less to eat. The panels will absorb and reradiate heat warming the area surrounding them.

  • Anyone else notice the quick 180 from "Oh my God there's never gonna be enough solar in the entire universe aah we're all gonna die if we don't keep burning fossil fuels as fast as fucking possible!" to "Your solar panels are going to literally kill the fucking desert! Aaaaaah save the planet! Crimes against nature! Stop the steal!" ...? I think that one gave me whiplash.

  • According to https://www.eia.gov/energyexpl... [eia.gov] US capacity was 1,200 million kilowatts in 2022. That is 1200e9 / 1e6 = 1200000 megawatts. Thus 11,236 megawatts represents a proportional increase of 11236 / 1200000 = 0.00936 (i.e., a 0.9% increase).

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