Dept of Interior Reaffirms Its Commitment to Fully Developing Public Land Green Energy.

[TaperPin]

Something close to 50 gigawatts of new solar capacity were installed in 2024. Doesn’t sound like it’s withering away if the average coal powered plant produces 1 gigawatt.

 

[Mike D Texas]

Something close to 50 gigawatts of new solar capacity were installed in 2024. Doesn’t sound like it’s withering away if the average coal powered plant produces 1 gigawatt.

How many acres were taken to make said 50gW?

Solar is the most inefficient way to produce power for consumption.

 

[TaperPin]

How many acres were taken to make said 50gW?

Solar is the most inefficient way to produce power for consumption.

Some people confuse efficiency with effectiveness. The solar panels running the exterior lights around our home are effective, so how technically efficient they are is so secondary it’s a non issue.

Some members of our family have had their whole house powered with solar since before solar was cool. It paid for itself a long time ago, and nobody we know would complain about free power, regardless of how efficient.

I see a large solar project spring up next to a cluster of data centers - about the same footprint as a traditional junk yard. I never complained junk yards were taking up too much space, so I could care less if some tech bros want to cut their peak daytime power costs.

 

[bigeyedfish]

I know of a spot in BFE Arkansas that currently has about 2,000 acres of panels. Within the next couple years it will be close to 6,000 continuous acres. Until you put eyes on these projects, it's pretty tough to understand the scale.

 

[CJ19]

The rush to implement Net Zero via renewable energy on public lands resulted in a gross number of deficiency that would result in damage to public lands.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/audit-found-weaknesses-review-wind-solar-projects-us-public-lands-2025-09-18/

An AI summary:


An audit by the U.S. Department of the Interior's Office of Inspector General (IG) has found significant weaknesses in the Bureau of Land Management's (BLM) review process for wind and solar project applications on public lands between 2017 and 2023. The audit revealed that more than one in four approved projects contained deficiencies, and for 84% of the 258 applications reviewed, there was no evidence BLM verified applicants' technical and financial capabilities to develop the projects.
The IG attributed these failures to insufficient management oversight, outdated policies, and inadequate staff training, and issued 10 recommendations for improved internal controls, which the BLM agreed to implement.
Audit Findings on BLM's Wind and Solar Application Process


The BLM failed to properly evaluate the technical and financial qualifications of most applicants for wind and solar projects on federal lands.

Over 84% of the 258 applications processed between 2017 and 2023 lacked evidence of verification of applicant capabilities.

The audit identified deficiencies in project applications that could have prevented their advancement, stemming from poor oversight and outdated procedures.

The IG recommended 10 new internal control policies and procedures to improve the review process, and the BLM agreed with nine of them

 

[CJ19]

Here is an interactive map resource that I found that helps lay out new renewable energy development and transmission lines. The layering system allows for different projects to be overlayed relative to public land and other geographic features. Credit to the creator. It is a nice tool.

Our Grid Future

ourgridfuture.org

 

[WRO]

Some people confuse efficiency with effectiveness. The solar panels running the exterior lights around our home are effective, so how technically efficient they are is so secondary it’s a non issue.

Some members of our family have had their whole house powered with solar since before solar was cool. It paid for itself a long time ago, and nobody we know would complain about free power, regardless of how efficient.

I see a large solar project spring up next to a cluster of data centers - about the same footprint as a traditional junk yard. I never complained junk yards were taking up too much space, so I could care less if some tech bros want to cut their peak daytime power costs.

Want to make solar effective, cover roof on houses instead of destroying habitat.

 

[CJ19]

Want to make solar effective, cover roof on houses instead of destroying habitat.

we sort of talked about that earlier in the thread. Small systems are incredibly difficult to translate into grid power at scale. Especially without storage. Renewable energy is going to require projects to be built at incredibly large scale with storage if they are going to work the way that proponents of electrification and renewable net zero would like. storage is a big part of the renewable plan. All the metals involved in storage and electrification are driving a lot of the mining activity I see conservationists expressing concerns about such as ambler road. Renewable facilities are generally increasing in size not decreasing. Look at SunZia for instance.

 

[CJ19]

I wanted to post an update to this topic since there is a important step in this issue and directly related to the original topic. In late April 2026, a federal court in MA granted a preliminary injunction regarding the Trump Admin's "slow-walking" of 6 renewable permits for a variety of reasons. Renewable companies and conservation/environmental groups have sort of joined forces legally to fight the administration to get those permits issued (1 example of amicus brief from NWF: https://offshorewind.nwf.org/wp-con...7-1_Proposed-Brief-of-Amici-Curiae-ISO-PI.pdf). These 6 permits are just the tip of the iceberg (please dont get mad about content of the media source. It is just for context on "re: lots of permits on hold" but many others news examples exist but are behind paywalls: https://www.heinrich.senate.gov/new...undreds-of-wind-and-solar-projects-nationwide). Many other permits are on "hold" and will like proceed as the 6 in this decision do. Is this the final say in public land renewable development? No. Does this decision potentially have an impact on many 10s of millions of acres of public land? Yes. I would expect some type of appeal, but when pressed about the issue, Sec Burgum did not really answer that. Link at the end.

I will try to keep to the abbreviated summary of the whole thing because people don't reading long posts. I will point out 2 things I found most interesting. The plaintiffs and friends of the court took issue with the admin/DOI use of a capacity density analysis and the administration having a an Eagle Take Permit Ban (DOI dropped this prior to lawsuit so injunction was not sought). There are 5 points the plaintiffs seek to enjoin preliminarily and stay. The Eagle Issue is not included in those 5. You can read the MA Federal Court Decision here:

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mad.293725/gov.uscourts.mad.293725.89.0.pdf

The admin/DOI essential using that capacity density analysis to say that the renewables had too big a footprint for the amount of energy generated.

The Eagle Take Permit Ban was essentially DOI scrapping the 2024 Biden Administration Adjustment to the Eagle Rule for incidental take of eagles (2024 Eagle Rule Change: https://www.federalregister.gov/doc...agle-nests-correction-and-technical-amendment) (original 2013: https://s3.amazonaws.com/public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2013-29088.pdf).

I have not seen this case posted on any of the hunting conservation forums or sites but I may have missed it. I would appreciate it if people would point out if i missed coverage as I am interested to hear takes from some of those sources. This is not a x or y admin or politician bad post so please don't drop a political hot take. I tried to keep it as factual as I could based on the documents. I used a link to the Energy and Natural Resources Committee (Mike Lee Chair/Heinrich Ranking Member) since that rounds out some takes from all 3 branches of government on the issue. I chose the social media link from the Ranking Member's feed as to avoid being called a shill for the administration. Here is Senator Heinrich pressing Sec. Burgum on the issue.

https://twitter.com/x/status/2049612438811689259

Again. Please no political hot takes as we have been asked to avoid those. I tried to be as factual as possible by including primary sources and felt this court decision warranted mention. If you think I stated something wrong or missed some context, by all means weigh in.

 

[WRO]

I'm glad to see them getting stopped, once a piece of dirt turns into a solar farm, its uninhabitable for anything else. They do not belong on our public lands.

 

[grainhog]

I'm curious about the intersection of the "not all public land is valuable habitat, so it's ok if we sell some of it to developers" sentiment on this forum with the "there should be no solar on any public lands" sentiment.

 

[WRO]

I'm curious about the intersection of the "not all public land is valuable habitat, so it's ok if we sell some of it to developers" sentiment on this forum with the "there should be no solar on any public lands" sentiment.

It’s actually pretty simple, we have severely fragmented habitat in areas that’s just blm owned homeless camps in severely land constrained communities, and then we have beautiful winter range, migration corridors, etc that they want to put 100s if not thousands of acres of solar on that will take it permanently out of use for everyone.

It’s very limited circumstances that I’m good with selling public land, and in a perfect world those sales would fund purchases of valuable winter range, but instead we’re in a world full of absolutists and hypocrites. Environmental organizations that fight oil and mining tooth and nail only to support large scale solar and wind for example. Groups that rail against public land ranching only to turn a blind eye to wild horse damage, the list of bullshit runs deep on both sides.