With A Stroke of a Pen, 20 Million Acres, 445 Square Miles Opened to Industrial Solar Farms

Presidents are agents of change. Link to the LA Times. 

The Obama administration has formally adopted a plan to help create large-scale solar energy plants, offering incentives for solar developers to cluster projects on 285,000 acres of federal land in the western U.S and opening an additional 19 million acres of the Mojave Desert for new power plants.

The plan places 445 square miles of public land in play for utility-scale solar facilities. The program, announced Friday by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at an event in Las Vegas, will apply to new projects only and not the 17 solar facilities already awarded permits or the 78 currently in the approval pipeline.

Environmentalists should love this.  No dual-use once those solar farms are in place. Solar panels preclude dual use. Desert tortoises will have lots of shade under those panels.

Solyndra will probably be offered the role as overall coordinator to develop these 20 million acres (19,285,000 acres to be exact).

Quid pro quo: after nine years of study, almost four years on President Obama's watch, the Federal government finally approved a permit for a small oil refinery in North Dakota, which might take up 200 acres of land, at most.