The U.S. Bureau of Land Management wants to be a landlord to more solar energy development in Utah and across the West, but it has a few rules:
• Keep the panels off the hillsides to avoid erosion and visual blight.
• Keep them near existing or planned power lines to avoid building new ones.
• Keep the cows away.
The BLM, which manages 42% of Utah land, has put out its draft environmental impact statement for utility scale solar development, and its preferred choice would make 3.8 million acres in the state available for solar farms. The draft is open for public comment until April 18.
The federal agency looked at five alternatives for its “programmatic” EIS, which is intended to identify areas across 11 Western states where permitting and leasing for solar power plants could be expedited. Any individual project still would need to go through a separate approval process.
Utah is considered a top-tier state for solar development because of its high number of sunny days year-round.
Not in sensitive areas
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
In all scenarios, the BLM would continue to prohibit solar farms near significant cultural resources like rock art and archaeological sites, and environmentally sensitive places like riparian areas near streams.
It doesn’t look likely that any solar farms are headed for the hills, which is probably good news for tourists who don’t want to see those panels so visible on Utah’s legendary landscapes.
All but the least restrictive option, Alternative 1, would bar solar installations on slopes greater than 10%, the EIS states, “to avoid resource impacts such as increased erosion and impacts on cultural resources, surface hydrology, tribal interests, visual resources, and wildlife and wildlife movement.”
Alternative 1 would open up almost 10 million acres (more than 18% of Utah) to potential solar farms. The most restrictive would allow them on 1.6 million acres, less than 3% of the state.
The BLM expects only a small portion of the available acreage to actually be used for solar panels in the coming years. The EIS also includes the agency’s “reasonably foreseeable development scenario,” which estimates that just 39,793 acres of Utah BLM land would be developed for solar by 2045.
Grazing under panels not yet ‘feasible’
Those developed acres likely would include some that are currently used for livestock grazing.
“Until such time that cattle grazing under solar panels becomes feasible,” the EIS explains, “grazing activities would likely be excluded from areas developed for utility-scale solar energy production.”
Only the land chosen for solar development would see grazing excluded, not all the land that is considered available for such projects. The BLM estimates that across the West under the “reasonably foreseeable development scenario,” solar development would displace about 2% of grazing allotments.
Spencer Gibbons, CEO of the Utah Farm Bureau Federation, said his organization plans to submit comments. “Utah Farm Bureau supports multiple use on federal lands, including renewable energy projects. If planned properly, renewable energy production and grazing can work together, as we have seen from previous projects. We do not, however, support projects which will hurt ranchers and local communities by decreasing lands available for grazing.”
The BLM prefers Alternative 3, which would make 6.93% of the state eligible. In addition to the 10% slope maximum, that alternative would require solar plants to locate within 10 miles of existing or planned power lines to avoid building more lines.
In Utah, that includes large southwestern areas and a crescent of land near transmission lines leaving the state’s major coal-fired power plants. It also identifes a big chunk in the West Desert, including lands that get used by the military, which could add complications to permitting.
“The intent of this alternative is to focus applications into areas near existing or planned transmission lines and energy load centers while still protecting high-value resources,” the EIS states, “thus reducing habitat fragmentation, natural resource disturbance, and environmental and cultural resource impacts.”
Christine Mikell, principal of Cottonwood Heights-based Enyo Renewable Energy, which has developed solar and wind projects across the West, said her company is still reviewing the EIS. “However, from a most basic perspective, if it streamlines permitting while minimizing substantive environmental impacts, we would be very supportive.”
She said most BLM land the company is interested in “is arid and does not provide good livestock forage so it is a good multiuse of the area.”
Tracy Rees, spokesperson for the Utah Office of Energy Development, said her office “is working with other state agencies to coordinate our comments during the public comment period. We are doing so in good faith that the BLM will give our comments serious consideration and that they will appreciate the work various stakeholders across the region have done to ensure our suggestions reflect the prudent use of our resources and protection of our lands.”
‘A false choice’
The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance wants the most restrictive Alternative 5. That plan includes all the limitations of Alternative 3, while adding a further requirement that the solar plants be on “previously disturbed” lands. SUWA is also seeking to restrict development on another 55,000 acres that appear in a wilderness bill it backs in Congress.
Hanna Larsen, a SUWA staff attorney, noted that even the most restrictive alternative still offers much more acreage than the BLM’s own estimate of what will be needed by 2045.
“SUWA knows that public lands have an important role to play in the urgent and necessary transition to renewable energy,” Larsen said. “… We also know that pitting the protection of public lands against support for renewable energy development in Utah is a false choice. We’re hopeful BLM will be willing to adjust its proposals to protect some of Utah’s wildest lands.”
According to the Utah Geological Survey, more than 30 utility-scale solar generation facilities are operating in the state and at least a dozen more are planned.
Two years ago, the BLM approved the first solar plant on its Utah lands, a 600-megawatt plant in the Milford Flats area of Beaver County, which is not yet operating. The Biden administration, as part of its aggressive clean energy agenda, aims to permit 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on public lands by next year.
