As part of President Obama’s commitment to developing our domestic energy portfolio, including our clean energy resources, U.S. Secretary of the 
Interior Ken Salazar recently made public a supplement to the federal plan to facilitate responsible utility-scale solar development on public lands in six western states – Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. The revised plan, the Supplement to the Draft Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement for Solar Energy Development (Solar PEIS), reinforces and improves upon Interior’s work to establish meaningful solar energy zones with transmission solutions and incentives for solar energy development within those zones. The blueprint’s early, comprehensive analysis will ultimately make for faster, better permitting of large-scale solar projects on public lands.
“Between the proposed solar energy zones, the flexible variance process, the additional state-based planning efforts, and the commitment to process pending applications, Interior is taking an ‘all-hands-on-deck’ approach to building a strong solar energy economy now and into the future,” said Deputy Secretary David J. Hayes.
How The West Was Won
“Tapping the vast potential of solar resources in the Western states will go a long way to diversifying the country’s energy portfolio and re-establishing our position as a clean energy leader in a global market worth trillions of dollars in the long term,” said U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu. “Advancing the deployment of utility-scale solar projects will not only help provide clean power to local utilities, it will also drive down the cost of solar energy and create American jobs in the rapidly-growing clean energy economy.”
