The Bureau of Land Management is stepping up the development of renewable power production on public lands, beginning a review of three proposed solar projects in Arizona that add more than 1 GW to the grid, and It updates decade-old guidance for planning power generation development. public land.

On Monday, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said a scoping meeting for the Jove solar project of up to 600 MW in La Paz County was imminent, and two proposed solar projects – the 300-MW Pinyon Solar project in Maricopa County and the Yuma County’s 300 MW Elisabeth Solar Project.

Haaland also announced that BLM is updating its 2012 Guidance for Program Environmental Impact Statements (PEIS) for solar energy developments in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. BLM will post a notice of intention in the Federal Register this week, giving interested parties his 60 days to provide feedback before beginning drafting an update.

advance notice solicit public comment “About the Scope of the Analysis, Potential Alternatives, and Identification of Relevant Information and Studies”

Developed by BLM in conjunction with the Department of Energy, PEIS “identified areas with high solar potential and low resource conflict to guide responsible solar development and provide certainty to developers.” the Ministry of the Interior said. said in Monday’s release.

PEIS is being updated “in light of technological improvements, new transmission and ambitious clean energy targets” that have emerged over the past decade.

“As part of this update, BLM is considering adding states, adjusting exclusion criteria, and identifying new or expanded regions to prioritize solar deployment,” the release said.

The three new solar projects in Arizona join a total of 65 proposed “utility-scale onshore clean energy projects” on western public lands that BLM is currently processing. This includes wind and geothermal projects in addition to solar.

“Together, these projects have the potential to add more than 31,000 megawatts of renewable energy to the western grid,” said the release. “BLM has also preliminarily reviewed over 100 applications for the development of solar and wind power and nearly 50 applications for testing wind and solar energy.