Battle Brews Over Obama's Renewable Energy Plan

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America’s deserts are stark, quiet places, where isolation and the elements have long kept development at bay. To outsiders, these arid expanses may not seem like prized land.

But they are poised to play a key role — and perhaps, to serve as a battleground — in President Obama's plan to  double U.S. electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal sources by 2020. To help ramp up that amount of clean energy, the White House has urged approval of an additional 10,000 megawatts of renewable energy production on public lands.

Estimates vary on exactly how many households would be served by the expansion, but  the Obama administration says the 25 utility-scale solar facilities, nine wind farms and 11 geothermal plants it has approved on federal lands so far will provide enough juice to power 4.4 million homes.

One thing is for certain: the new drive for large-scale solar will require land. The  U.S. Department of Interior's Bureau of Land Management so far has  issued permits or is conducting environmental reviews for solar, wind and geothermal projects covering about 310,000 acres — an area around the size of Wyoming’s  Grand Teton National Park. Many projects require that electric transmission lines be built over miles of open space to connect the remote renewable generating plants to the grid serving population centers.

The administration generally wins plaudits from environmentalists for its effort to expand energy that doesn't belch smoke, cancer-causing chemicals or heat-trapping carbon dioxide. But there is growing concern among a number of environmentalists, particularly in the West, about the impact on fragile ecosystems, plants and animals. Some have filed lawsuits that could slow the effort to devote more public land to renewable energy.

"We need a new model for the way public lands are managed that recognizes we can’t keep trying to divide the pie up between exploitation and preservation," said Janine Blaeloch, director of the  Western Lands Project, a Seattle-based group that has  filed a legal challenge to the program.

Renewables drive

As Obama noted in his State of the Union address, renewable energy from sources like solar and wind doubled in his first term. Economic stimulus funding in 2009 made it easier for projects to take shape. Despite the enormous growth, fossil fuels still dominate.Together,  wind, solar and geothermal energy accounted for just 2 percent of U.S.  primary energy consumption in 2012, government data show.

“Using less dirty energy, transitioning to cleaner sources of energy, wasting less energy through our economy is where we need to go,” Obama  said at Georgetown University June 25, promising to issue enough permits to double the number of megawatts solar and wind projects generate on federal property. “And this plan will get us there faster.”

The abundant sunlight in desert regions makes them  some of the world’s best locations for solar energy projects, and the nation’s largest environmental groups were quick to praise the new climate initiative. The  Natural Resources Defense Council released a study showing 210,000 jobs would be added by 2020, along with lower electric bills in 11 of 14 states it examined.

But the effort to devote large tracts of public land to renewable energy has not been trouble-free.

Combined with stimulus financing that came with strict deadlines to break ground, a land rush ensued — and regulations were sometimes slow to catch up. That led to speculative investments, lawsuits, canceled projects and other complications.

David Lamfrom, a senior program manager for the  National Parks Conservation Association who works in California’s Mojave Desert, said an area dentist even submitted a development application in the initial frenzy.