Feds Push Western Solar Plan - Rep. Hageman raises key questions for Wyoming

by Wyoming Liberty Group

Let's give a shout out to our very own Harriet Hageman, Wyoming's sole representative in Congress.

Rep. Hageman recently called out the Bureau of Land Management—otherwise known as BLM—and its misguided Western Solar Plan, which would vastly expand the amount of public land that could be used for big industrial solar projects. Perhaps up to 31 million acres in nearly a dozen states in the West, including our very own Wyoming.

Congresswoman Hageman joined with Western Caucus Chairman Dan Newhouse, a congressman from Washington state, along with nine other members of the Western Caucus, which includes 62 members of the U.S. House of Representatives. They wrote a letter to the Bureau of Land Management, the federal agency within the Department of Interior responsible for administering federal lands. They requested that the federal agency, working under the direction of the Biden administration, withdraw its Western solar proposal.

"The BLM's 'Western Solar Plan' will adversely impact 31 million acres of federal lands across 11 states and upend existing activities that drive America's energy independence, thus weakening the resilience of the American energy grid and propping up unreliable energy sources, while simultaneously stripping local communities of important revenue-generating activities," Rep. Hageman said.

"This proposal will severely impact Wyoming, as half of our state's surface lands are federally managed. The 'Plan' blocks off large swaths of lands for the installation of environmentally unfriendly solar panels, eliminating the ability to graze, mine, or produce fossil fuels – all the things that America needs to drive down costs of energy, food, and housing. The Biden-Harris assault on our Western way of life needs to be brought to a swift end this November, before they can inflict even more damage."

Chairman Newhouse echoed Hageman's sentiment, saying, "The proposed Western Solar Plan is another Biden-Harris Administration policy that is detrimental to communities across the West. This plan … threatens valuable grazing lands while also elevating intermittent energy over more affordable and reliable sources. I'm proud to join Representative Hageman and my colleagues in asking BLM to withdraw this misguided proposal and prioritize an all of the above energy approach to unleash the full energy potential of the American west."

Representatives Hageman and Newhouse raise several important issues that need to be addressed.

First, on the face of the proposal, it's a federal land grab, which is rarely, if ever, a good thing.

But equally troubling, this federal proposal pushes the interests of the renewable energy industry, propping it up artificially, despite the many problems that come with it.

What's more, as Hageman noted, the federal plan "is incompatible with the type of environmental standards that ought to be upheld by the BLM, as it replaces environmentally and economically efficient activities with vast surface-altering impairments" that can harm ecosystems.

Let's also not forget what Hageman underscores—that this federal plan undermines oil and gas development in Wyoming—not to mention ranching, another important industry for us in our state. Most of the eligible land under the federal plan would allow solar development to encroach on grazing lands that are important to ranchers, even as the BLM maintains that its proposal would preserve most ranching, including areas for livestock usage. Nonetheless, Hageman indicated that the federal plan does not offer a clear process to handle problems between ranchers and solar industry developers.

And then, there's this important fact: renewable energy is not the panacea to all of our problems, despite the federal government's advocacy for such newer sources of power. Why? Well, for one, solar energy can be costly to buy and put in place, and it depends on the vagaries of sunlight, which we all know isn't always around when we need it. In addition, solar energy storage is expensive and solar farms gobble up a lot of land and damage wildlife.

Wind energy, another form of renewable energy, presents many of the same problems as solar power: Wind energy also uses up a lot of land, it is expensive, it is hazardous to wildlife and it too is dependent on the fickleness of the comings and goings of the winds.

Often overlooked also is that renewable energy sources require a ton of power lines to get that energy to where folks live and consume power for their daily lives. And these power lines are costly and require massive work to cut through mountains and other terrain to get to population centers.

Wyoming deserves better.