The federal government wants to make 5 million acres of Utah land available for solar energy projects to boost the country’s clean energy transition.
But while the state and environmental groups generally support solar development, both said they have concerns with the federal government’s plan, such as a lack of state involvement. They also cite potential impacts on sensitive landscapes and habitats, like in Utah’s West Desert and the Great Salt Lake’s shores.
“Instead of a targeted approach, the [Bureau of Land Management] is painting the whole desert green to become available for solar,” said Patrick Donnelly, Great Basin director for the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity, “and that could lead to resource conflicts and environmental damage.”
The BLM released its Western Solar Plan in late August, which would make 31 million acres across 11 western states available for solar energy development, facilitating President Joe Biden’s goal of reaching a 100% clean electricity grid by 2035. The proposal is an update to a 2012 solar development plan, which only included six states.
(Christopher Cherrington | The Salt Lake Tribune)
The proposal points solar developers toward public land that has been previously disturbed or degraded, like near transmission lines. It blocks solar development on land that is vital wildlife habitat, home to cultural resources, or already protected, such as by a wilderness designation.
Land with a slope greater than a 10% grade was also excluded from development, as solar projects require flatter surfaces. Some areas are available for development with certain restrictions. But “just because lands are available for solar applications,” the plan notes, “does not mean that the BLM has decided these areas are suitable for solar energy development.”
The plan does not authorize specific solar projects, but identifies lands open for project applications. Proposed projects would require site-specific environmental reviews.
Solar a ‘single use’?
The BLM is required to manage public lands, which make up nearly two-thirds of Utah’s land, for “multiple use and sustained yield.” Congress charged the agency to balance at times competing uses — like grazing, mining, recreation, energy development and timber harvesting — on public land for the public good.
But solar development reduces public lands to “single use,” said Dusty Monks, acting director of the Utah Office of Energy Development.
Once solar panels blanket an area, he continued, that land is closed off to other uses, like for wildlife migration or livestock grazing.
If the proposed Western Solar Plan is finalized, the BLM anticipates that about 700,000 acres across the 11 states will be developed for solar energy.
The agency says that scenario would displace 123 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, a planet-warming gas, each year.
The BLM’s plan “harnesses this clean and abundant resource responsibly, focuses projects away from ecologically and culturally sensitive places, honors community input, and realizes the imperative that our public lands must be part of the climate solution,” said Justin Meuse, director of government relations for energy and climate for environmental nonprofit The Wilderness Society, in a statement.
But Monks said potential solar projects could displace another form of renewable energy: geothermal. This energy captures heat from within the earth and has seen progress in Utah, specifically in Beaver County, where the BLM wants to open land for solar applications.
The Beaver County Board of Commissioners did not respond to a request for comment about the Western Solar Plan.
“The BLM recognizes the potential overlap between solar and geothermal resources in Utah,” wrote Tracy Perfors, a renewable energy program coordinator for the agency, in an email. “We are committed to balancing the development of these renewable energy resources to ensure both are managed sustainably.”
Monks believes that Utah’s concerns with the Western Solar Plan could have been mitigated if the state had been more involved in developing it.
“You have people from Washington, D.C. who see a waste, barren land in some of our state, where others may see beauty and tranquility and peace and opportunity to escape,” he said.
“When we’re not at the table, we can’t bring those local concerns to the discussion,” Monks added.
Utah in August announced that it’s suing the BLM for control over millions of acres of “unappropriated” public land in the state, arguing that the state would do a better job of managing the land than the federal government.
Perfors said that the Utah Public Lands Policy Coordinating Office and four Utah counties participated in the planning process.
She added that the plan is currently being reviewed by affected governors, including Utah Gov. Spencer Cox. “This review process offers an additional opportunity for Utah to provide input before the final plan is approved,” Perfors wrote.
Potential harms to wildlife
Desert bighorn sheep, elk, tortoises and greater sage-grouse inhabit Utah’s West Desert, the arid sprawl west of the Great Salt Lake.
“Part of what makes the Great Basin region such a special place,” Donnelly said, “is it’s a pretty undisturbed landscape, by and large.”
The BLM’s plan would open much of the sunny West Desert to solar projects. To install solar panels, developers must bulldoze vegetation to flatten it, which demolishes wildlife habitats and destroy what makes the Great Basin region such a special place for Donnelly: “That it’s a pretty undisturbed landscape, by and large.”
The Western Solar Plan would also make areas along the Great Salt Lake’s shoreline available for solar applications, which environmentalists fear could endanger the 12 million birds that rely on the saline lake and its wetlands.
Researchers hypothesize that birds confuse shiny solar panels for bodies of water when flying over the desert, a theory called “lake effect.” Birds change their flight to land on the panels and can die when attempting to land.
“Putting solar panels right next to the lake seems pretty foolish,” Donnelly said, “because what’s to stop the birds from thinking that’s the lake?”
Perfors said that the Western Solar Plan has taken these concerns into account and “proposes a reduction in public lands available for solar development in the area around the Great Salt Lake to help protect critical habitats for migratory birds.”
She added that future solar proposals will undergo site-specific environmental reviews, which include public comment periods, to assess impacts on wildlife.
Entities that have been involved in the planning process for the proposed Western Solar Plan are able to submit protests until Sept. 30. Governors have until the end of October to review the plan.
After the BLM considers remaining protests and feedback, the agency will publish the final plan.
