The Search for Environmentally-Sustainable Solutions & Clean Technologies*
The Bureau of Land Management’s decision to suspend U.S. solar energy projects until it completes an environmental review will make it impossible to transmit solar energy from power plants to end users in the southwest. The maps below show BLM owned land in the southwestern United States with validated solar-energy resources.
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Map of Promising Sites for Wind Power
The Bureau of Land Management eclipsed the promise of solar energy in the United States yesterday. The tragic fate of the U.S. wind power industry in the 1980s illustrates how the BLM’s decision will impact the still embryonic U.S. solar energy industry.
U.S. Windpower, the largest wind power company in the United States and the last to fall, died on the fields of Carbon County, Wyoming in 1996. U.S. Windpower, which changed its name to Kenentech Windpower in 1993, was founded in 1974 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The founder, Stanley Charren, saw the future potential of generating electric power by means other than fossil fuels and wanted to create an energy company that used wind as its power source. The company was incorporated in 1979 as U.S. Windpower to design and sell wind turbines and wind power. During the early 1980s, U.S. Windpower designed and produced its first-generation wind turbine.
Sphere: Related ContentThe Bureau of Land Management said it will suspend all new solar energy projects on federal land for the next two years until it completes an environmental impact review. As discussed briefly in the preceding post, the BLM holds the country’s most valuable sites in terms of solar energy potential, which are heavily concentrated in the southwest. The federal government owns roughly 650 million acres of land - nearly 30% of its total territory. The vast majority of those lands are located in the Western states and the vast majority of federal lands in the Western states are owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Here’s a state by state breakdown of government land ownership.
Federally Owned Land in Western States
1. Nevada 84.5%
2. Alaska 69.1%
3. Utah 57.4%
4. Oregon 53.1%
5. Idaho 50.2%
6. Arizona 48.1%
7. California 45.3%
8. Wyoming 42.3%
9. New Mexico 41.8%
10. Colorado 36.6%
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Map of World’s Solar Energy Resources
The U.S. Department of the Interior wants to kill solar power exactly where solar power is most promising - southwestern United States. The BLM manages more land – 258 million surface acres – than any other Federal agency. Most of this public land is located in 12 Western States. The Department’s Bureau of Land Management announced today that it would stop current solar energy projects until it completes an environmental review, which could take as long as two years.
CleanBeta has discovered an internal study conducted by the Bureau of Land Management in 2003 that describes the enormous potential for concentrated and photovoltaic solar energy production on BLM lands in the same six states where it froze today’s projects. The study (attached below) recommends that BLM rapidly increase the number of solar energy projects on these public lands. In fact, this is what BLM did. In the five years since the document appeared, the Bureau began recruiting solar energy projects to select sites on federal lands, which led to the dramatic increase they are now using as an excuse to shut the project down. The document raises serious questions about the Bureau’s reasons for freezing the solar energy projects located on federal lands. Please read the document — Bureau of Land-Management-Solar Energy on Federal Lands Assessment
The Bureau, with a budget of about $1 billion, also administers 700 million acres of sub-surface mineral estate throughout the nation. The BLM’s multiple-use mission is to sustain the health and productivity of the public lands for the use and enjoyment of present and future generations. The Bureau accomplishes this by managing such activities as outdoor recreation, livestock grazing, mineral development, and energy production, and by conserving natural, historical, and cultural resources on the public lands.
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Sphere: Related ContentScientists have discovered a new hybrid atom that might make it possible to build quantum computers. This data visualization shows an electron density map of the material. The funnel-shaped figure in the lower left is an arsenic atom, and the saucer-shaped image in the center is a map of an electron binding to various atoms. The yellow dots in the upper left-center are the electron in the quantum state.
