Feds Establish New Renewable Energy Coordination Office
Outgoing Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne issued a Secretarial Order authorizing the Bureau of Land Management to establish offices to expedite the permitting of renewable energy and associated transmission facilities on BLM lands.
The offices will oversee the the siting and permitting of wind, solar, biomass and geothermal projects on BLM-managed lands in the American West. This process will be similar to other energy permitting work the BLM does for coal, oil and gas—like lease auctions, public meetings, comment periods and other tools of stakeholder management—except a lot less contentious.
The offices will be known as Renewable Energy Coordination Offices, and will initially be located in Arizona, California, Nevada and Wyoming.
Despite what some might hope, the Coordination Offices are not being created to simply fast-track and rubber-stamp any and all renewable energy projects that come down the pike. Rather, they are saddled with ensuring that the siting processes adhere to a whole litany of environmental regs found in the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, the Energy Policy Act of 2005, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, and any other current or new laws and regulations that might apply.
Section 211 of the Energy Policy Act of 2005 calls for the development of 10,000 megawatts of non-hydropower renewable energy projects on the public lands by 2015. Makes you wonder why Sec. Kempthorne and the Bush Administration took so long to create this office in the first place.
Image: CC Licensed by flickr user poo dog
