Here comes the sun

BY KAREN WILLIAMS ICA Natural Resources Policy Director

It is usually at this point of the year, just before the promise of spring appears, that the aggregation of cold, blustery, sunless days really drags a soul down. Hang in there. Shortly the sun will begin to offer greater warmth and increasing presence.

Since life began, humankind has not just thrived under the sun’s warming rays but has survived by using the sun to sustain life. While we have always relied on the sun for various life-sustaining uses, harnessing its power for conversion to electricity is relatively new to the scene.

we certainly carry our weight and put that energy to good, productive use, being a world superpower and maintaining the world’s largest economy with a 25% share in the world’s gross domestic product (GDP).

So where does all that needed energy currently come from? According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, in 2021, about 4.11 trillion kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity were generated at utility-scale electricity generation facilities in the United States. Of that total, about 61% of this electricity generation was from fossil fuels—coal (21.9%), natural gas (38.4%), petroleum (.5%), and other gases. About 19% was from nuclear energy, and about 20% was from renewable energy sources including wind (9.2%), hydropower (6.1%), and last but not least, the topic of the hour, solar (2.8%).

While residential solar panels have been cropping up on the rooftops of houses in local neighborhoods for the past several years, large utility-scale solar development project proposals have of yet, been limited. However, such proposals are enjoying a rise to popularity, at least by “green” energy enthusiasts and capitalistic potential developers who have taken note of the Biden administration’s push for renewable energy development.

In a society where energy requirements are high, production of that energy remains a pretty high priority. By the numbers, the United States’ share of world population was about 4% in 2021 while our share of the world’s energy consumption was 16%. I do not share this statistic as an accusation. After all,

The Biden administration has not been shy about its desire to rid the U.S. of its fossil fuel dependence. In order to do so, energy production from other sources would have to increase dramatically, as evidenced by the statistics above. Thus, the push for renewable energy development and the administration has set its sights on public lands for such development. In an Executive Order issued in 2020 entitled “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad, President Biden ordered the Secretary of the Interior to ‘‘review siting and permitting processes on public lands’’ with a goal of increasing ‘‘renewable energy production on those lands. That was followed up with The Energy Act of 2020 passed by Congress which directs the Secretary to ‘‘seek to issue permits that, in total, authorize production of not less than 25 gigawatts of electricity from wind, solar, and geothermal energy projects by not later than 2025,

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through management of public lands and administration of Federal laws.’’

And more recently, Interior Secretary Haaland announced plans to follow up on this direction by ramping up efforts to support solar energy development on public lands across the West. Under her direction, The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has developed an updated plan to guide solar energy development on public lands through an updated Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS), which will “help accelerate and continue momentum for the clean energy economy.” Among other things, the PEIS expanded priority solar development areas to include Idaho. ICA submitted comments detailing concerns about the proposal and about solar development during the public comment period which just closed on February 6.

What does this all have to do with the cattle industry in Idaho? I’m afraid we are all about to find out just how impactful solar development can be to ranch and rangelands. Utility-scale solar energy development is not compatible with any other land use. It requires exclusive and extensive use of the land. The land under which solar developments exist is sterilized and its very large perimeter is fenced. To put a finer point on it, where solar is developed grazing is eliminated. Entirely. Siting of solar development on public lands in Idaho will take out thousands of acres at a time. There is very little BLM land in Idaho that is not currently occupied by a grazing permit. Virtually any solar development in our state on BLM lands will reduce livestock AUMs.

Aside from the very pertinent concerns about solar development’s impact on our industry, there are very real concerns about the environmental impact of solar development, frustratingly overlooked by the administration in its zeal to keep up appearances in “saving the climate”. Cows, and their owners, are under a ridiculous amount of scrutiny when it comes to analyzing their potential to impact the environment. The quantity of bureaucratic hoops that must be jumped through in order to turn livestock out on federal lands would laughable in its irrelevance to the actual impact on the land, particularly when compared to the net benefit of grazing, if not for the very real burden it puts on livestock producers. Yet bureaucratic and hypocritic blind eyes are turned to the impacts of a use such as solar which would obliterate the landscape for wildlife and any other productive use.

To provide electricity for 1,000 homes, a solar power development would require 32 acres of land which means that in order to meet the needs of U.S. energy consumption, 19 million acres of land would be required (equivalent to the entire land mass of South Carolina). That’s 19 million acres upon which no other use would be possible. Further, it has been estimated that 1 gigawatt of power generated by solar equates to 10,000 acres of land disturbance. By comparison, 1 gigawatt of nuclear energy equated to 640 acres of land disturbance. Further, the management and disposal of hazardous materials required for solar energy infrastructure is, in itself, energy intensive. The International Renewable Energy Agency (who knew there were so many governmental organizations devoted energy—the bureaucracy remains astounding in its mass) projects that by 2050, solar energy systems could be responsible for up to 78 million metric tons of waste. The environmental footprint of so-called renewable “green” energy is massive even if it may not have the carbon footprint of other energy sources.

So, what can you do about it? Engage in upcoming public processes. Based on the sudden and rapid increase applications for of solar development on public land in Idaho, along with the push from Washington to approve such development, Idaho BLM is undertaking a process to review how the agency reviews and approves renewable energy development proposals within the state. Public meetings have been scheduled for February 22 in Idaho Falls, February 23 in Twin Falls, and February 26 in Boise to explain how the solar application process will work. We encourage federal grazing permittees to participate in this process to express concerns about implementation of any single-use activity and explain the many benefits of the facilitation of continued livestock grazing on federal lands.

Interesting days are ahead of us on this issue, for sure, and we’ve got a fight ahead of us. ICA will continue to not only be involved in any discussions related to solar development on grazing land but be firm in our approach and philosophy that grazing is the highest and best use of the landscape and any reduction in the availability of land to graze will not be tolerated.