An order issued late Friday by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that targets wind and solar development has left renewable energy developers and industry observers scrambling to determine whether green energy has any future in the Trump administration.
Burgum’s secretarial order requires that Interior agencies evaluating new onshore solar and wind project proposals, as well as offshore wind projects, consider “capacity density,” or how much area the projects cover.
Commercial-scale solar and wind projects typically require a much greater amount of land and water than other sources, specifically oil and natural gas or nuclear power. In the case of federal land, that means they essentially “tie up” large swaths of acreage, raising the question of whether solar and wind could meet the interpretation of the Bureau of Land Management’s multiple-use mandate offered in Burgum’s order.
“Based on common sense, arithmetic, and physics, wind and solar projects are highly inefficient uses of Federal lands,” Burgum said in a statement accompanying the order. “Thus, when there are reasonable alternatives that can generate the same amount of or more energy on far less Federal land, wind and solar projects may unnecessarily and unduly degrade Federal lands.”
That could place into doubt the future of an estimated 35 solar projects and three wind projects proposed on federal lands that are awaiting action in the permitting pipeline. The order from Burgum is one of a succession of actions taken by the Interior Department under President Donald Trump that likely restrict solar and wind development, including requiring that the Interior secretary personally approve each project.
On Monday, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), which is part of Interior, followed up on the Burgum order by rescinding requirements that the department publish a five-year schedule of anticipated offshore renewable energy lease sales every two years.
In its announcement, BOEM said Interior had determined the regulation “unnecessarily limits the Secretary’s discretion over scheduling renewable lease sales.”
Burgum’s latest order “is yet another attempt by the administration to kneecap the clean energy transition by targeting wind and solar projects that are already well into the approval process,” said Justin Meuse, government relations director for climate and energy at the Wilderness Society. “This is toxic behavior — clearly designed to drive wind and solar developers off public lands while further rigging the system in favor of oil, gas, and coal leasing and speculation.”
An Interior spokesperson declined to comment beyond what Burgum said Friday in announcing his order.
Even projects that have already been approved, such as the Rough Hat Clark Solar Project in southern Nevada that BLM approved just days before President Joe Biden left office in January, could be in doubt.
A spokesperson for San Francisco-based Candela Renewables, the developer of the project that would have a capacity to power about 120,000 homes, says they are still trying to determine what the order means as far as moving forward to construction.
Joshua Axelrod, senior advocate for the Natural Resources Defense Council’s nature program, said it may be up to the wind and solar industry to take legal action, if they choose to.
“I think it’s up to the industry to see how aggressive they want to be,” Axelrod said.
“They have bid for rights-of-way and have received rights-of-ways, and have paid their rents and sunk probably millions of dollars into the permitting process and all the geophysical surveys they needed to do to prepare these projects, some of them are quite large and ready to build and ready to get on the grid,” he said. “It’s kind of up to them to some degree to fight if they have any legal ability to do so.”
He added, “At some point, someone is going to have to point out to his administration that we need more power and the power that’s ready to go is wind and solar.”
Sean Gallagher, senior vice president of policy at the Solar Energy Industries Association, ripped the series of aggressive actions by the Trump administration to curtail renewable energy development on federal lands and waters.
“It’s clear that this administration cares more about promoting their favorite energy sources than winning the AI race and powering America’s future,” Gallagher said. “Heavy-handed, bureaucratic red tape has become their go-to strategy. We know the administration is not actually serious about so-called ‘inefficient’ use of federal lands.”
Travis Annatoyn, a former deputy solicitor for energy and mineral resources at the Department of the Interior during the Biden administration, said that while the order appears aimed at hampering wind and solar in favor of other energy sources, coal, natural gas and nuclear power plants are rarely built on federal lands.
“There really isn’t much conflict that would require forcing this either/or approach to energy development,” said Annatoyn, now an attorney at the law firm Arnold & Porter. He also said that planning documents for federal lands designate certain areas for specific types of projects, making it difficult to swap them out based on a preference for higher capacity density.
“It’s not as though if you scrap a solar project, you can go ahead and plop down a natural gas or coal fired power plant,” he said. “The legal regimes aren’t set up to do that.”
Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center, echoed Annatoyn.
“The large tracts of land in Nevada that were going to host solar installations don’t have fossil fuel resources. So it’s not a matter of fossil being a more efficient use of that land; they’re not competing for this acreage,” Gerrard said.
Rather, it’s all about targeting the renewable energy development that the Biden administration prioritized.
“They cooked up this formula to give an objective-looking veneer to their goal of squelching renewables and supporting fossil fuel extraction,” he said.
