The land surrounding Blythe, California, about 200 miles east of Los Angeles, is not a particularly hospitable place. Summer temperatures in this corner of the desert routinely reach well above 100°F, rain is sparse, and dusty soil covers much of the bare earth. But that doesn’t mean the land is useless. Rows of solar panels now cover around 4,000 acres just outside of town, capturing that harsh sunlight and generating 485 megawatts of renewable energy—enough to power about 145,000 homes.

This solar farm was built by NextEra Energy Resources. However, the land is controlled by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), a federal agency that oversees nearly 250 million acres of public land in the United States—land that belongs to every American.

Renewable energy development on these public lands could be a way to speed up the country’s transition away from fossil fuels. The Wilderness Society notes that “public lands and waters have some of our nation’s best solar, wind and geothermal resources, but [as of 2021,] they account for less than five percent of clean energy capacity in the US.” 

This August, the BLM released an updated proposal to its Western Solar Plan, a framework that outlines where solar energy can be developed on public lands in the western half of the country. The proposal would facilitate solar energy development on 31 million acres of public lands, a major boon to climate action. But that solar development should also be planned carefully. Public lands are also home to wildlife that make their homes in deserts and grasslands, recreational sites among canyons and forests, and an array of Native American cultural sites–and papering over sensitive areas with solar panels could be devastating.

The new proposal attempts to balance solar development with these concerns. Some groups have lauded the BLM’s latest proposal, while others have expressed concern. But if the country wants to wean itself off fossil fuels, figuring out how to rapidly expand renewable energy capacity on the nation’s public lands–without neglecting people and wildlife–could be vital.

BLM lands have long been used for many purposes, from conservation and recreation to mining, logging and cattle grazing. And over the past decade and a half, the agency has released some plans to guide renewable energy development on public lands, including the first version of the Western Solar Plan, released in 2012 and was specific to the Southwest.

The new Western Solar Plan would expand the agency’s guidance to the rest of the West and designate 31 million acres of land as potentially available for solar development. That doesn’t mean all 31 million acres would be automatically open for business, however. “It's easy for your mind to kind of jump to this vision where literally 31 million acres are blanketed in solar panels, and that's not what this is,” Rachael Hamby, the policy director with the nonprofit Center for Western Priorities, said. 

The BLM notes specifically that “proposed projects will still undergo site-specific environmental review and public comment.” In addition, the agency expects just 700,000 acres of this land to be developed. Yet by narrowing the scope of land potentially available for solar development, the plan could simplify the process of developing solar farms on public land.

So how did the agency decide which lands might be available for solar and which to exclude? Partially, this came down to efficiency, such as limiting solar development to land within 15 miles of existing or planned electrical transmission lines. In addition, lands with slopes greater than 10 percent (like mountain ranges) were excluded from potential development—and lands that had been “previously disturbed” (meaning significantly altered from their natural state) were included in the final acreage, no matter how far they were from transmission lines.

But the largest category of lands excluded were those with “resource-based exclusions,” ranging from critical habitat areas for threatened and endangered species to National Scenic Byways and Tribal Interest Areas, including sites sacred to Native Americans. In total, 125 million acres of land across the West were excluded from potential development in an attempt to protect these resources.

Some groups have expressed confidence in this plan. In August, a representative from the Wilderness Society said that “the BLM’s final Western Solar Plan harnesses this clean and abundant resource responsibly, focuses projects away from ecologically and culturally sensitive places, honors community input, and realizes the imperative that our public lands must be part of the climate solution.” In addition, the Solar Energy Industries Association said in August that while they were “still reviewing the details,” they were “pleased to see that BLM listened to much of the solar industry’s feedback.”

Yet some experts also expressed concern that important environmental and cultural resources could still be harmed under this proposal. In part, that’s because resources need to be recognized by the BLM to be excluded–and Shaaron Netherton, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of Nevada Wilderness, is worried about some key areas in her state that could be overlooked in the current plan. 

For example, her organization has suggested that a stunning landscape on the edge of the Mojave and Great Basin, home to wildlife like bighorn sheep, should be designated as an “area of critical environmental concern,” or ACEC. However, most of the land is not officially protected, and under the proposed Western Solar Plan, some of it would be open to solar development. (In March, the BLM issued an evaluation of the proposed ACEC, which did not recommend designation, stating that “existing management and statutory responsibilities would be sufficient to protect” the area’s resources.)

Another area of concern in Nevada is Bahsahwahbee, a grove of juniper trees just north of Great Basin National Park. This area had long been a gathering site for the indigenous Western Shoshone Tribe–but during the mid-19th century, it also became the site of three massacres of Native Americans, including the largest single massacre of Native Americans in the country’s history. The Ely Shoshone Tribe, the Duckwater Shoshone Tribe and the Confederated Tribes of the Goshute Reservation, supported by Nevada senator Catherine Cortez Masto, have pushed to designate the land as a National Monument. But for now, the land is still unprotected, and parts of the proposed monument overlap with the acreage opened up to potential solar development. (The BLM did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

Pilar Thomas, a lawyer with Quarles and Brady who focuses on tribal energy issues and represents tribes and developers, notes that renewable development on public lands could also increase traffic through nearby tribal lands. She worries that low lease rates for renewable energy development on public land could make it harder for tribes to negotiate higher leasing fees for renewable energy development on their own lands.

The BLM notes that it has sent letters to various tribes and consulted with a handful of them on the new proposal as of this summer. However, Thomas said that, in her opinion, there was “no real concerted effort to continually engage tribes in the plan and in the planning process.” 

“And admittedly, this administration, which has been better than most in some very important ways, in my view, really fell down on the job,” she adds.

Some of these concerns still have time to be addressed during the review period on individual project proposals. That said, Netherton notes that properly responding to all of those proposals can require a lot of time and effort.

The BLM plans to issue a final decision on the Western Solar Plan at the end of December, even though a new administration will take over the agency in January. While the new administration will likely work to increase fossil fuel development on public land, it’s unclear what might happen with renewable energy development on public land. That said, a group of 11 GOP representatives signed a letter to current BLM director Tracy Stone-Manning earlier this year in protest of the proposed Western Solar Plan—and this month, Heatmap reported that Nevada GOP Nevada governor Joe Lombardo has been pushing to get the plan rescinded.

No matter what happens with this plan, America’s public lands—and the ecological, environmental, recreational, and cultural resources that lie within—will have to contend with another threat: the rise of disasters such as wildfires, droughts, and floods under climate change. And while balancing the needed growth in renewables with preservation and conservation will not always be easy, there could be some potential win-wins. Netherton notes, for instance, that she’d love to see more solar development along Interstate 80, the major highway that runs through sparsely-populated northern Nevada, as well as in disturbed landscapes like semi-reclaimed mining areas. And to Hamby, the bottom line is about finding the balance to minimize impacts on wildlife and landscapes while “advancing the desperately, urgently needed transition to clean energy.”

“In each place where these projects are being proposed,” she said, “that probably will look a little bit different. But the overall goal has to be the same.”