The U.S. Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has proposed a plan that will allow utility-scale solar development on up to 31 million acres of public land.
The initiative, an update of the Obama-era Western Solar Plan, will span 11 westerns states with the goal of improving the federal permitting process. It will expand the potential development area from 22 million acres and direct projects to areas closer to transmission corridors and previously disturbed terrain.
According to S&P Global, the plan focused on areas of Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah in 2012; the new, additional states are Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.
The solar development plan comes after the Biden administration surpassed its goal of permitting more than 25 GW of clean energy on public lands earlier this year. Permitting and interconnection are major bottlenecks for U.S. solar developers and have long sparked calls for reform.
BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning called the plan “a responsible, pragmatic strategy for developing solar energy on our nation’s public lands that supports national clean energy goals and long-term national energy security.”
The BLM will finalize its record of decision and amendments to its approved resource management plan in December.
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