The federal government will expedite two wind and five solar projects in Arizona, California, Nevada and Wyoming, which together will be worth nearly 5,000 MW of generating capacity, according to an Aug. 7 announcement by the White House.

The announcement is part of the Obama administration's goal of developing utility-scale renewable energy projects on public lands. In the last three years, the U.S. Department of Interior has approved more utility-scale renewable energy projects on public lands than in the past two decades -- a total of 31 new projects worth a total of over 7,500 MW.

The White House announcement credits the pace of approvals to "a coordinated and focused review process."

"Basically, we're focusing energy and attention to make sure these projects don't get delayed during the permitting process, but we're not cutting corners -- that's the point we'd like to make," said Dennis Godfrey, a spokesman for the Bureau of Land Management's Arizona office.

Godfrey's office is overseeing permitting for two projects -- the 425-MW Mohave Wind Energy project under development by BP Wind in Mohave County, and the 100-MW Quartzsite Solar Energy project under development by Solar Reserve in La Paz County.

The Mohave project is being developed on 38,099 acres of BLM land and 8,960 acres of Bureau of Reclamation land and is scheduled to complete the federal permitting process by January 2013. The Quartzsite project, which will use concentrating solar power technology, will be built on 1,675 acres of BLM land and is slated for final approval at the end of this year.

Two projects in Riverside County, Calif. -- the 150-MW Desert Harvest Solar Energy project under development by enXco, and the 750-MW McCoy Solar Energy project by NextEra -- are both slated for final federal approval at the end of this year.

Both projects will use photovoltaic technology; the Desert Harvest project will be situated on 1,200 acres of BLM land and the McCoy project will cover 4,893 acres of BLM land.

Jeff Childers, the BLM project manager for the McCoy project, told Energy Prospects West that "it's not really expediting -- it's just that we're focusing a little more attention on these projects. We just follow our process; we can't skip steps and we have our statutory deadlines we have to meet, anyway." Childers added that the California projects were pretty far along in the permitting process and being among the list of federally expedited projects didn't really impact the pace of their permitting, as far as he could tell.

Nevada also has two projects included in the White House announcement: the 200-MW Moapa Solar Energy Center under development by RES Americas on a 2,000-acre site on the Moapa River Indian Reservation and BLM lands in Clark County, and the 350-MW Silver State South solar project under development by First Solar on 13,043 acres of BLM land in the Ivanpah Valley of Clark County.

The Moapa project is being developed in cooperation with the Moapa Band of Paiute Indians and will use 100 MW of PV and 100 MW of CSP technology. Once constructed, it will be one of the first large-scale solar projects on tribal lands in the U.S. It is slated for final federal approval by December 2013.

The Silver State South project will use PV technology and is scheduled to complete the federal permitting process by March 2013. Its companion project, the 50-MW Silver State North, has been built, making it the first solar project on public lands to deliver power to the grid, according to the feds.

Wyoming has one project on the list: the Chokecherry/Sierra Madre Wind Energy project, under development by Power Company of Wyoming.

According to the BLM, the project will produce up to 3,000 MW on 230,000 acres of BLM land in Carbon County, making it the largest proposed wind farm in North America. As it's currently configured, it avoids critical sage grouse habitat identified in the "Sage Grouse Core Areas" map crafted by the feds in December 2010, in an effort to shield the chicken-like ground-dweller from energy development in 11 western states.

The project issued its final environmental impact statement in July, and is slated for a completed permitting process by October 2014.

- Penelope Kern

 

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