The Department of the Interior announced an updated roap for solar energy development across the West, designed to expand solar energy production in more Western states and make renewable energy siting and permitting on America’s public lands more efficient.  2b3f2i

The proposal is an update of Bureau of Land Management (BLM) 2012 Western Solar Plan, which identified areas in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah with high solar potential and low resource conflicts in order to guide responsible solar development and provide certainty to developers. Following months of stakeholder engagements – including 15 public scoping meetings – the updated roap refines the analysis in the original six states and expands it to include Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

In considering updates to the Western Solar Plan, the BLM worked with the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory to examine forecasts for national clean energy needs and determined that approximately 700,000 acres of public lands would be needed to meet those goals. The BLM’s preferred alternative in the updated Western Solar Plan would provide approximately 22 million acres of land open for solar application, giving maximum flexibility to reach the nation’s clean energy goals.  

BLM utilized 4.3 million dollars from the Inflation Reduction Act to invest in these updates to the Western Solar Plan. This investment is helping improve the solar development application process by providing developers with better predictability, while also maintaining sufficient flexibility to address site-specific resource considerations. This planning work also seeks to provide updates that respond to changes, like advances in technology, that have occurred since the BLM’s last programmatic solar development planning effort over a decade ago. 

The sector's stance

Following the declaration of the Western Solar Plan update, Ben Norris, vice president of regulatory affairs at the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), said that "BLM’s proposal is a big step in the right direction and recognizes the key role solar plays in our energy economy. SEIA has been advocating for changes to the Solar PEIS for over 12 years and appreciates BLM’s extensive efforts to gather stakeholder and make revisions that balance development and conservation."

For his part, A Chief Policy Officer Frank Macchiarola, explained that “solar energy had a strong year in 2023 and looks to build on that upward trajectory, modernizing our power systems and economy in the process. The Western United States has proved critical in driving this and prior deployment. We are hopeful that BLM’s action—which identified 22 million available acres and takes proximity to transmission into for development in the Western U.S.—will help expedite the permitting of solar energy on public lands which has historically lagged private land deployment.”