The U.S. Dept. of the Inside’s Bureau of Land Administration (BLM) has canceled an environmental influence evaluate of Esmeralda 7, a proposed 6.2-GW photo voltaic + storage mission in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The seven separate arrays that might have composed Esmeralda 7 have been sited on 62,300 acres of BLM land.
The Gemini Photo voltaic + Storage mission in Nevada. Primergy
The mission is listed as canceled beneath the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act standing on the BLM’s website. Photo voltaic Energy World reached out to the BLM for remark, however was met with a voicemail stating no one is in workplace as a consequence of federal authorities shutdowns.
Esmeralda 7 entered the BLM’s purview in November 2023, and shortly after held durations for public remark and bureau mission scoping. From the unique evaluate timeline, BLM deliberate to have a ruling on the mission in April 2025.
“Whereas we await additional readability from BLM on its obvious resolution to abruptly cancel these photo voltaic tasks within the late phases of the evaluate course of, we stay deeply involved that this administration continues to flout the legislation to the detriment of shoppers, the grid, and America’s financial competitiveness,” mentioned Ben Norris, VP of regulatory affairs for the Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation (SEIA). “We want extra energy on the grid, quick, and the photo voltaic and storage business is able to present it, however we want the administration to get critical about actually reaching American vitality dominance.”
Esmeralda 7 was slated to be constructed subsequent to the proposed 525-kV Greenlink West transmission mission, with all seven photo voltaic + storage arrays interconnecting to the Esmeralda substation. The proposed tasks have been: Lone Mountain Photo voltaic, Smoky Valley Photo voltaic, Gold Mud Photo voltaic, Nivloc Photo voltaic, Pink Ridge 1 and Pink Ridge 2. In keeping with an environmental influence assertion assembly held in July 2024, the arrays have been anticipated to take 5 years to construct with a constant workforce of 845 folks.
SEIA been following the DOI’s added scrutiny for siting renewable energy projects on federal land. Throughout a roundtable assembly with members of the photo voltaic commerce press at RE+ 2025, Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA, mentioned this concerning that extra oversight: “We’ve heard quite a lot of issues by way of the influence on non-public growth. All the pieces from, [developers] contacting the workplaces of BLM and asking what the method is, and no one actually is aware of what the method is, to not listening to again from discipline workplaces, as a result of there doesn’t appear to be a transparent route from the secretary’s workplace, relying on the place this the mission is … I believe of us are having some one-off conversations, making an attempt to navigate particular permits straight with the Division of the Inside. However it’s my sense that this is likely to be a cascading type of concern. Over time the log jam will get extra extreme as these programs that have been by no means identified for his or her alacrity turn into much more cumbersome.”
