Anyone who has visited Nevada knows the Silver State has an abundance of another natural resource: sunlight. Naturally, lawmakers there have been determined to make the most of it. The desert state generates about a third of its electricity from solar panels, the highest in the country on a per capita basis.
Since 2019, leaders from both parties have supported plans to draw more than half its energy from renewable sources, especially solar.
Increasingly, however, those lofty ambitions seem unlikely to succeed for the same reasons that energy projects across the country just can’t seem to make much headway: The country is consumed by a culture of “no.”
Last week, the Interior Department quietly announced the cancellation of the state’s Esmeralda 7 project, which would become one of the largest solar power farms in the world if completed.
The plan consists of 62,300 acres for panels and batteries, all on federally-owned land in a remote desert northwest of Las Vegas. Developers estimate the project could produce up to 6.2 gigawatts of energy, enough to power almost 2 million homes.
The reason for the cancellation remains unclear, but it fits with the Trump administration’s strategy of suffocating renewable energy with bureaucracy.
The gigantic development is a consortium of seven separate projects, whose developers decided to band together for the arduous permitting process, as opposed to enduring it separately. Now, the Interior Department says that the developers must each start the process over individually if they want to proceed, which would include redoing environmental reviews that were already completed.
Even if the developers decide to slog ahead, they are destined to endure a long, frustrating journey that will raise their costs.
In July, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — once a faithful adherent to an all-of-the-above energy strategy — issued a directive requiring his personal review and approval of all solar and wind projects on federal lands. This has predictably and dramatically slowed down developments across the country.
A month later, Burgum also required his department to consider “capacity density” when evaluating projects, putting large-scale operations at a disadvantage.
These directives have delayed another key part of Nevada’s solar plans. To connect projects such as Esmeralda to the state’s population centers, developers have been planning a set of high-voltage transmission lines known as Greenlink.
But the administration has slow-walked approval for that project as well. This prompted Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo, who supports solar energy, to complain in a letter that the administration’s policies will “unnecessarily delay energy development.”
Unfortunately, Interior has many allies in its obstructionism. Many conservationists and rural residents have taken up the cause. Some environmentalists say the projects could disrupt the habitats of endangered species, such as the greater sage-grouse. They ignore that killing clean energy projects is itself a threat to biodiversity. Others simply don’t like the idea of vast fields of panels blemishing highway vistas.
America will not be able to tackle its greatest challenges — soaring energy needs from the artificial intelligence revolution, tepid economic growth, climate change and so on — if it cannot find the will to build again.
