Published

2 years ago

January 18, 2024

Alice Rush

The Department of the Interior (DOI) has updated its roadmap for solar development across the U.S. West, designed to improve production in more states and efficiency in renewables siting and permitting on public lands.

The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) also announced next steps on several projects in Arizona, California and Nevada, representing more than 1,700 MW of potential generation and 1,300 MW of potential battery storage capacity.

“The Interior Department’s work to responsibly and quickly develop renewable energy projects is crucial to achieving the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035, and this updated solar roadmap will help us get there in more states and on more lands across the West,” says Laura Daniel-Davis, DOI acting deputy secretary,. “Through historic investments from President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, the Interior Department is helping build modern, resilient climate infrastructure that protects our communities from the worsening impacts of climate change.”

The BLM has also published a draft analysis of the updated Western Solar Plan, streamlining the bureau’s framework for siting solar energy projects. The proposal is an update of BLM’s 2012 Western Solar Plan, which identified areas in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah with high solar potential and low resource conflicts in order to guide responsible solar development and provide certainty to developers. The updated roadmap refines the analysis in the original six states and expands it to include Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming.

The BLM is currently processing 67 utility-scale onshore clean energy projects proposed on public lands in the western U.S. This includes solar, wind, and geothermal projects, as well as gen-tie lines vital to clean energy projects proposed on non-federal land. These projects have the combined potential to add more than 37 GW of renewable energy to the Western grid.

The BLM is also undertaking the preliminary review of over 195 applications for solar and wind development, as well as 97 applications for solar and wind energy site area testing.

The post DOI, BLM Announce Next Steps in Promoting Solar Energy Development appeared first on Solar Industry.

DOI, BLM Announce Next Steps in Promoting Solar Energy Development

Renewable Energy

The Catastrophic Shift in America’s Impact on the World

Published

13 hours ago

March 22, 2026

Alice Rush

It’s not as if the United States has held the moral high ground throughout its history, with its slavery, the butchering of the Indians, Jim Crow, the support of tyrannical dictatorships around the globe, and the corrupt suppression of the working class in favor of Trump’s billionaire donors.

Yet, it was very recently that the entire nation became a force for the destruction of civil society.

The Catastrophic Shift in America’s Impact on the World

Renewable Energy

We’re Running Out of Time

Published

2 days ago

March 20, 2026

Alice Rush

There really are threats to human civilization that seem to be mounting in intensity:

• World fascism. (If it can happen in the U.S., it could conceivably happen anywhere.)

• Environmental collapse.

• Malicious use of AI.

• Pandemics, as misinformation on vaccinations spread and the frozen tundra melts, releasing pathogens never seen by humans.

• Nuclear war.

Addressing the point made at left, is there any scenario in which world governments agree to cooperate so as to stave off the end of an organized society here on Earth? One supposes so, though it sounds far-fetched in today’s world in which the leaders of most of the 200+ sovereign nations are trying so desperately to cling to power.