BLM’S Western solar plan

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) announced in an August 29, 2024, press release its proposed roadmap for solar energy development on public lands. It would make over 31 million acres of public lands across 11 western states available for potential solar development, driving development closer to transmission lines or on previously disturbed lands.

The press release said that they will be steering project proposals away from areas where they may conflict with other resources or uses will help ensure responsible development, speed the permitting process, and provide greater predictability to the solar energy industry. This plan analyzes five additional western states (Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming), in addition to the six states analyzed in the original plan. 

It went on to explain that no new solar developments are authorized through this planning effort; proposed projects will still undergo site-specific environmental review and public comment. To date, the Biden-Harris administration has approved 40 renewable energy projects on public lands.  

Some western states representatives including Wyoming’s Harriet Hageman and Montana’s Matthew Rosendale are concerned with the far reaching effects the plan will have on ranchers and the public who enjoy use of the BLM lands.  They point out that the plan is also costly to taxpayers and lessens the reliability of the current power grid.

The chairman of the Western Caucus and a Washington state Representative, Dan Newhouse said the Bureau of Land Management’s Western Solar Plan would have devastating impacts on grazing permittees across western states while threatening energy reliability across the region. By opening up over 31 million acres to potential solar plan development, ranchers will see rangeland covered in solar panels and sage brush habitat destroyed just to expedite the “green” energy transition, he said.

“The finalized solar plan ignores the concerns of impacted stakeholders who work off the land so the Biden-Harris administration can appease their environmental activist allies. The regulatory attacks on the Western Way of Life from unelected bureaucrats, especially the Western Solar Plan, must be stopped at once,” said Newhouse.

Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman said the Western Solar Plan will weaken the resilience of the American energy grid, while simultaneously stripping local communities of revenue-generating activities. 

“This proposal will severely impact Wyoming, as half of our state’s surface lands are federally managed. The BLM received extensive comments expressing concern about grazing limitations and acknowledges that all area outside of the exclusion areas are likely to become incompatible for grazing. In the Resource Management Plan Amendment, the lands made available for utility scale solar application would overlap more than 29.9 million acres of existing grazing allotments. This will put ranchers out of business, plain and simple,” said Wyoming Representative Harriet Hageman. 

 ”Covering large swaths of land with solar panels will disrupt ecosystems, significantly alter landscapes, and is just a terrible idea. Look to the devastation we have seen when adverse weather tears through a solar field- you are left with toxic material everywhere and no way to clean it up. How would the BLM clean that up? The Biden-Harris assault on our Western way of life needs to be brought to a swift end this November, before they can inflict even more damage,” Rep. Hageman said. 

Montana Representative Matthew Rosendale calculates that the Western Solar Plan would lock up 572,479 acres of public land in Montana alone, encompassing vast open areas that could otherwise support multiple uses. The northeastern region of Montana, identified for possible solar development, is recognized as a migration corridor for pronghorns and greater sage grouse that move between Montana and Canada, he said. “Additionally, covering this land with solar infrastructure would restrict Montanans’ access to recreation, grazing, and tourism, which are vital to our state’s economy and citizens livelihood,” said Montana Representative Matthew Rosendale in an open letter to BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning. 

Rosendale told Fox News that the solar plan is more expensive than current energy options, which places a burden on the taxpayer being forced to subsidize it. He also said that the Western Solar Plan may violate the Taylor Grazing Act, which regulates grazing on public lands, and will produce intermittent energy in places where it will still need to be transmitted hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of miles before it can be used. 

Todd Devlin Prairie County Montana rancher, county commissioner, chair of the National Association of Counties Public Lands Steering Committee and executive director of the Montana Natural Resource Coalition of Counties explained that the BLM manages public lands and subsurface minerals under the Federal Land Policy and Management Act, or FLPMA Of 1976 and that the Western Solar Plan is in violation of FLPMA. “If a plan involves more than 100,000 acres of land the Secretary of the Interior is required to report it to Congress, and they will vote Yes or No. This plan has not gone to Congress and will take the public lands away from the other uses. Once solar is installed the land can not be used for anything else, no grazing, hunting, fishing, recreation, timber, or mineral development.” 

He urges citizens to contact their representatives and senators and urge them to force the secretary of the Interior to abide by the law and put the plan to a vote. “This plan will have to be challenged in court, I wish the executive branch of the government would follow the law that has been on the books for years.” 

The release of the Final Utility-Scale Solar Energy Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and Proposed Resource Management Plan Amendments (also known as the proposed updated Western Solar Plan), comes as the Biden-Harris administration released new data claiming to have  improved federal permitting processes to help deliver more projects, more efficiently, across the United States and reach the administration’s goal of 100 percent “clean electricity grid” by 2035.