Biden proposes to lay waste to 22 million acres in Western states for solar ‘development’

Biden’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has announced another “climate change” gambit, again through the so-called Inflation Reduction Act:

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management on Wednesday unveiled an updated solar roadmap that proposes opening 22 million acres for developing utility-scale solar on public land in 11 Western states.

The proposal refines the BLM’s existing maps of land open to solar development in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah, and adds new maps of potential development areas in Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming, according to a press release from the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The BLM’s climate change heist has an unexpected wrinkle, that is, opposition from some environmental interests—who are not (yet) on the same page, as may have been the federal assumption:

The plan would direct development away from sensitive resources, BLM says, but some environmental advocates disagree.

The BLM has proposed six alternative roadmaps with varying degrees of protection for critical habitat and cultural resources, but the preferred option appears to include lands previously ruled unsuitable for solar development [emphasis added], according to Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of Basin and Range Watch, a Nevada-based conservation group.

Without any published data yet on estimated total project costs, the money train on this federal mega-subcontracting device has already left the paymaster’s station:

The BLM used $4.3 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to work with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and other stakeholders to develop the proposed roadmap. According to the agency, NREL determined that 700,000 acres of public lands will be needed to meet national needs and goals for renewable energy deployment. The agency’s preferred roadmap, which restricts development to areas within 10 miles of existing or planned transmission, would open 22 million acres to applications by solar developers.

Funny how the BLM’s roll-out echoes that of Biden’s EV push: con developers and commercial interests into investing in solar “technology” by paying them to play. Later on, they find out the real costs when the products fail, and folks just aren’t into them. We know how well that’s gone for U.S. automakers. The fallout will be, as with the EVs, that these solar projects run aground (meanwhile hurting wildlife, agricultural resources, and natural species, thus depriving us further of all that collectively sustains us) because they just plain can’t compete with oil and gas—as Europe already knows—but that’s another pile of our taxpayer billions down Biden’s slush fund gob.

The Biden folks have already got the spin going on deflecting awkward concerns on this massive “power” grab:

The Interior Department’s work to responsibly and quickly develop renewable energy projects is crucial to achieving the Biden-Harris administration’s goal of a carbon pollution-free power sector by 2035 — and this updated solar roadmap will help us get there in more states and on more lands across the West.

Goodness, very lofty goals indeed. But problems still lurk—such as, no bottom lines showing us how much this emerging boondoggle will cost us. And another problem: the not-so-settled-science of carbon being the climate bad guy, as such:

Carbon dioxide, or CO2, which is characterized as a damaging pollutant by mainstream media and progressive politicians, is hugely beneficial to Earth and life on the planet, an expert has said. Gregory Wrightstone is executive director of the CO2 Coalition, a nonprofit organization with a mission to educate about the role of CO2 in the environment, including making the earth green and helping crops to thrive.

Plants process CO2, water, and sunlight into nutrients and oxygen.

Solar energy has been active in development, production, and use in Europe longer than in the U.S. So, how’s that going for them? Not well:

Europe’s solar industry should be basking in sunshine. Solar is central to the EU’s hopes to generate 45 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030. Since August, however, eight European solar supply chain companies have either filed for bankruptcy, paused production, warned of factory closures or restructured debts, according to SolarPower Europe. Domestic companies cannot compete with a glut of cheaply-priced imports from China, the global leader. Switzerland’s Meyer Burger Technology typifies the crisis: its shares are down 87 per cent in the past year. It announced last week it would close a module production site in Germany, one of Europe’s largest, and hoped to raise up to SFr250mn via a rights issue to fund expansion in the US.

So, we are going to import a failure? Well, Biden is already doing that by more than replicating Europe’s immigration crisis. Why not on to energy? We used to lead; now, let’s follow!

Image: Public domain.