The US Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) identified 31 renewable energy projects that have met the required milestones to remain on the fast-track list for expedited processing.
With the December 2010 deadline for obtaining incentive funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act only a year off, BLM Director Bob Abbey guaranteed full environmental analysis and public review for the projects to meet the timeline.
Abbey said that this first wave of projects (14 solar, 7 wind, 3 geothermal, and 7 transmission) range in scale from as small as 24 megawatts (MW) up to 986 MW, large enough to supply power to 900,000 homes. Technologies vary, as does acreage involved, but he said "they represent the first generation of large-scale renewable energy projects to be carefully sited on public lands over the next several years."
Fast-track projects are those where the companies involved have demonstrated to the BLM that they have made sufficient progress to formally start the environmental review and public participation process.
The list includes numerous high-profile projects, including: BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah, Solar Millennium’s Chevron 1 and 2, Duke Energy’s Searchlight, Ormat’s McGuinness Hills, and Iberdrola‘s Tule Wind Project.
The full list is available here.
“The fast-track process is about focusing our staff and resources on the most promising renewable energy projects,” said Abbey, “not about cutting corners, especially when it comes to environmental analyses or opportunities for public participation.”
All renewable energy projects proposed for BLM-managed lands will receive the full environmental review required by the National Environmental Protection Act and will include the same opportunities for public involvement required for all other land-use decisions, BLM said.
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