As my colleague Alex Jackson so aptly put it, “The world is watching and California is stepping up”. Fortunately California has always been a leader in conserving lands and wildlife as well as fighting climate change.
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Sept 14 The United States on Wednesday unveiled a long-awaited plan for desert renewable energy development that the solar and wind industries said unfairly favors land conservation and severely limits the ability to build projects critical to meeting the nation’s climate goals.
U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell shown at Grand Canyon National Park in July.
“Today we celebrate the culmination of more than eight years of thoughtful planning, deep collaboration and extensive public engagement to guide future management of 10 million acres of California desert that belong to all Americans”, Jewell said. The Department of Interior and their partners at the state of California should be congratulated for proving through the DRECP that conservation, clean energy and climate leadership can go hand in hand.
Jewell and other state leaders announced the approval and signing of Phase I of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which will set aside land for both conservation and energy development. The DFAs created through this plan include lands around the Salton Sea where renewable energy development has the potential to not only generate clean energy but also be part of a comprehensive solution to some of the Salton Sea’s ongoing environmental challenges. The plan clarifies that BLM lands added to the special National Conservation Lands System-a system set up specifically to recognize and protect BLM lands with nationally significant resources-are protected forever; that means they can not be taken out of conservation by future land management plans.
Of the almost 11 million acres of public lands that the BLM studied as part of the DRECP, the final plan sets aside less than 388,000 acres for renewable energy development, much of which BLM acknowledges is not appropriate for solar and wind projects.
Since the initiation of the DRECP in 2008, California has substantially increased its renewable energy and carbon reduction goals, and the Obama administration has declared even more ambitious plans to combat climate change.
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, eight years in the making, was created to streamline development of wind and solar projects on federal and private lands in California while preserving pristine desert habitats.
The California desert is arguably the most important renewable energy resource area in the country, with world-class solar radiance and wind energy resources near major population centers.
“The DRECP has simply failed to adapt to enormous changes in law and policy that mandate a significant and urgent increase in renewable energy development on public lands and elsewhere”, said Shannon Eddy, Executive Director of LSA.
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