The Hill News

U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar recently announced a new comprehensive plan to develop solar energy on federal public lands in the West. Interior’s approach to guide solar development to appropriate low-conflict areas, or “energy zones,” will help reduce time and costs for permitting, providing greater certainty for project success and generating clean energy faster. This type of solar development is what Salazar calls “Smart from the Start." 

The new plan, contained in a document supplementing the Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, is the result of months of work by the Obama administration to address concerns and recommendations submitted jointly from conservation groups and solar industry companies, and from more than 80,000 public comments from people across the nation earlier this year. 

The document provides additional environmental analysis of 17 proposed solar energy zones and explains that seven of the zones origin! ally proposed were eliminated, some because they were “stranded” without transmission, others because of lack of industry interest or high environmental conflicts. It also details a process for adding additional development areas and provides developers with some flexibility to site well-designed projects outside of zones through a variance process.

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