Overview: Global climate change poses an unprecedented threat to the health of public lands that we have dedicated ourselves to protecting and to the biodiversity that these lands support. Climate change also poses a dire threat to the human communities that rely on our public lands for clean water, clean air, and social and economic benefits including tourism, quality of life, scenic beauty, and recreation.

When combined with expanded conservation and efficiency, renewable energy is key to the West’s energy and economic future and to the nation’s response to the challenges of climate change.

Significant opportunities exist to promote distributed generation of solar and wind energy, but large-scale central generation will likely be an important component of a national transition to clean energy. Solar and wind energy generation are the leading technologies that offer the potential to be deployed at the utility-scale.

Substantial renewable energy resources are found on California’s public lands, and developing these resources will likely be an important component to meeting our goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. California's electric utility companies are committed to using renewable energy for 33% of their power by 2020, and solar energy will be a major source of that power. In the California desert, solar resources are concentrated on federal land managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

As with any large-scale energy development, capitalizing on these new energy sources entails environmental risk. Already, the BLM has received over 65 right-of way applications for solar projects on more than 500,000 acres in the California. At its heart, utility-scale renewable projects are large industrial developments with inevitable adverse impacts, including surface disturbance, transmission infrastructure, and visual impairment. Development of renewable resources on public land should be undertaken only when necessary and in such a manner that minimizes risks.

It will take a shift in the thinking—and practices—of the conservation community not to oppose large energy development. Conservation organizations, wildlife agencies, and engaged citizens working to conserve Western lands and wildlife need to find a way to move beyond supporting the concept of renewable energy development to actually identifying lands suitable for plants and transmission lines. We need to understand and accept the inevitable environmental and economic trade-offs of various locations proposed for development. More importantly, we will need to move our community beyond simply saying “no” to development toward finding those places where we can say “yes, build it here.”

Currently, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Department of Energy (DOE) are jointly preparing a Solar Energy Development Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS). California is one of six western states affected by the plan. The PEIS serves two main purposes. First, it will establish a BLM program to process future solar applications on public lands it administers, and will amend land use plans in the project area. Secondly, it will provide the DOE with policies for minimizing impacts of all solar projects which the agency provides funding for on federal, state, tribal, and private land.

As part of the PEIS, the agencies will be looking at how and where solar development should be permitted (or prohibited) on BLM public land within the planning area, and the DOE is specifically considering how to minimize or avoid impacts to natural and cultural resources. A rigorous PEIS now, when solar is in its early stages, will be essential for developing solar infrastructure while protecting wildlife, water and the landscapes that make the West great. The current schedule calls for the Solar PEIS to be completed by the spring of 2010.

The Wilderness Society led a coalition of environmental groups to provide detailed comments to the agency on topics ranging from siting considerations and potential impacts to sensitive resources, to transmission. By getting involved in this process early, we can best influence the agencies to support renewable energy development in a way that protects the environment.

The Wilderness Society is also a lead participant in the Environmental Working Group of the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) – a statewide, collaborative process to identify the transmission needed to meet the state renewable energy goals, facilitate siting of transmission and generation, and identify the areas, or zones, that are the most cost effective and least environmentally sensitive for renewable energy generation.

The Wilderness Society will continue to work through state and federal planning processes to avoid unnecessary impacts from renewable energy development to California’s wildlands. Our role must be to encourage energy conservation and the development of renewable sources of energy; guide proposals for developing alternative energy resources to the most appropriate sites, which may include private and public lands; ensure adequate mitigation and oversight in areas where required; and articulate a sound rationale for efforts to prevent such development where it is not appropriate.

Project Goals: The primary goal for this project is to develop and apply a list of environmental screens to evaluate renewable energy projects in the California Desert.

Environmental screens: Develop and apply a list of environmental screens to projects in the California Desert. The list of screens would include criteria such as distance to transmission, distance to load, impacts to wildlife habitat, impacts to wildlife species, etc. Compile, analyze, and translate the environmental screens for use in guiding renewable energy development information about the impact of renewable energy projects (particularly wind and solar) on important environmental factors.

Once the list of screens is complete, flesh out and apply the screens to proposed projects on public and private land. Select a sample of projects to evaluate using screens.  During this process, refine the screens based on use in the project evaluation. These evaluations will help determine which projects The Wilderness Society opposes or supports.

Reach out to renewable energy companies and associations to refine and promote guidelines. Develop and promote guidelines for good renewable energy siting, construction and operation. These guidelines could become a model for renewable energy development throughout the West.

Depending on the skills of the SNRE Master Project team, additional goals for the project could include any or all of the following:

Local planning laws: Research any existing planning laws at the local and county level that facilitate renewable energy development in suitable locations. For example, are there local incentives to develop already existing disturbed lands? What are the local and state tax implications for this type of renewable energy development? Make recommendations for local, state, or federal laws or incentives that can be used to promote responsible renewable energy development.

Evaluate Economic Impacts: What are the economic impacts of large scale renewable energy development to local communities? Answers to this question could evaluate a range of economic impacts: from loss of open space and visual impacts from renewable energy developments to the increase of jobs from construction and maintenance of these plants. Your research would help raise awareness among decision-makers across the state about the economic benefits from the state’s emerging new energy economy, through economic impact models that show the full range of benefits of renewable energy.

GIS Analysis: Develop a spatial “build out” model for solar and wind technologies. What is the footprint and associated impacts from this development: actual facility, associated roads, associated transmission, habitat fragmentation, surface disturbance, etc. This model could be applied to projects west-wide. Develop models to generate build out scenarios that allow us to evaluate the relative impacts of different densities and configurations of development to minimize impacts on wildlife and wildlands.