The Trump administration’s cancellation of what would have been one of the world’s largest solar power projects has some industry observers fretting over the future of renewable energy on public lands.
They predicted the Esmeralda 7 project — by far the largest solar project that had moved through the permitting process under former President Joe Biden’s Interior Department — won’t be the last major project in the pipeline to be pulled. It was one of a number of Nevada desert solar projects that had been steadily advancing through regulatory review by the Biden administration.
Scott Sklar, sustainable energy director at George Washington University’s Environment & Energy Management Institute, said the Trump administration had set up a “multitude of regulatory barriers and delays.” These delays, he added, have placed financial strain on the renewable energy companies with projects waiting for review and could lead to others walking away from pending projects.
“The administration wants to stop these projects, period, so there is no chance for approval,” he said.
Michael Gerrard, director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, agreed. “As the Trump administration continues to take actions hostile to renewable energy projects, that may not be the last solar project on federal land to cancel,” he said.
The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday updated its planning website for the Esmeralda 7 project to note that the environmental review of the project was “cancelled.”
The decision to cancel the programmatic environmental impact statement was described by a federal government official with knowledge of the situation, who was granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly, as a mutual decision by BLM and the handful of companies that had proposed the seven individual solar power projects that would have comprised Esmeralda 7.
The Interior Department in a statement Friday afternoon said that the solar developers and BLM had “agreed to change their approach for the Esmeralda 7 Solar Project in Nevada. Instead of pursuing a programmatic level environmental analysis, the applicants will now have the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts.”
Representatives with the energy companies involved in developing the seven individual solar power plants that collectively comprised the Esmeralda 7 project did not respond to requests for comment.
The Trump administration has made its skepticism of the solar build-out in Nevada clear in recent months, with Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and other officials saying solar is an “intermittent” technology that doesn’t provide reliable energy. But some conservationists alarmed by the proposed rollout of large solar projects in Nevada and other Western states celebrated the demise of Esmeralda 7, saying as designed it took up up far too much land.
“Friends of Nevada Wilderness is thrilled that this poorly sited project is dead,” said Shaaron Netherton, the group’s executive director.
“In the push to get this particular project through, the BLM ignored the importance of this region’s cultural significance, biological significance and the fact that it is one of the most intact landscapes remaining in Nevada,” Netherton added.
BLM in July 2024 issued a draft programmatic environmental impact statement for the project and had originally planned to issue a final review document in April.
At least 35 commercial-scale solar power projects that were under at least preliminary review by BLM when President Donald Trump took office still await action.
That includes final EISs for the 700-megawatt capacity Copper Rays Solar Project, the 400-MW Purple Sage Solar Project and the 300-MW Bonanza Solar Project, all in Nevada.
What’s more, two major solar projects that were issued records of decision in the final weeks of the Biden administration have since sat in limbo — the Jove Solar Project in southwest Arizona and the Rough Hat Clark County Solar Project in southern Nevada, with a combined capacity to power 350,000 homes.
Burgum and his department have increasingly tightened the restrictions on solar and wind projects. Burgum signed a secretarial order that directed the agency, among other things, to eliminate policies granting “preferential treatment” for wind and solar development on federal lands and waters. The department also issued guidance to agency leaders that Burgum and Deputy Secretary Kate MacGregor would need to review a long list of procedural decisions for those projects.
Burgum in August also signed an order that requires Interior to consider “capacity density” when evaluating solar and wind projects, which could hinder them because they tend to take up more land than other kinds of energy development.
The Solar Energy Industries Association did not respond to requests for comment.
But Abigail Ross Hopper, SEIA’s president and CEO, sent a letter to Burgum in August asking to meet with him to discuss his agency’s moves to restrict permit approvals for renewable energy.
Interior informally declined the meeting request, according to an industry official granted anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Concerns about project’s size
The Esmeralda 7 project was ambitious by most any measure.
It included seven individual solar projects and would have covered about 63,000 acres of BLM rangelands. If built as imagined, it could have produced about 5,350 MW of electricity — enough to power nearly 2 million homes.
Among the individual proposed projects is the 1,500-MW Gold Dust Solar Project, which would cover more than 17,000 acres and rank among the world’s largest solar projects in terms of energy output.
On the surface, at least, the project appeared to be proposed in an ideal spot in Esmeralda County.
The federal government controls 98 percent of the county’s 2.2 million acres, and BLM accounts for the vast majority of that — managing 2.1 million acres there.
There’s not a single incorporated town, and only about 729 residents, ranking it among the 20 least populated counties in the nation, with the nation’s second-lowest population density of residents per square mile.
But the project had garnered concerns about its sheer size and the potential for it to disturb migratory patterns for wildlife.
Conservation advocates, local government leaders and nearby residents have expressed concerns about the cumulative environmental impacts of the proposed Esmeralda 7 project, which in addition to covering a huge swath of desert lands would have also included miles of roads and associated transmission lines.
They have argued for placing onshore utility-scale projects on previously disturbed sites and expanding the use of rooftop solar.
The Esmeralda 7 project “would have destroyed significant archaeology sites, rare plants, bighorn sheep habitat and wilderness quality lands,” said Kevin Emmerich, a co-founder of Nevada-based Basin and Range Watch.
The cancellation of the project “will give us a chance to protect the tremendous resources of the area, including beautiful and wild mountain ranges and valleys, rare plant populations, and bighorn sheep,” said Laura Cunningham, a biologist with Western Watersheds Project.
“Paleontological fossil beds [the Esmeralda Formation] here were formative to understanding the geological history of the Great Basin,” Cunningham added. “This is good news for recreationists and for conservation efforts of an amazing landscape.”
Scott Streater can be reached on Signal at s_streater.80.
