Wind Watch is a registered educational charity, founded in 2005. |
Biden scraps Trump plan to weaken environmental rules to build renewables in California
Credit: By Nichola Groom | Reuters | February 17, 2021 | www.reuters.com ~~
Translate: FROM English | TO English
Translate: FROM English | TO English
The Biden administration on Wednesday said it would scrap a Trump-era proposal to weaken environmental protections for millions of acres of California desert to ease development of wind and solar energy projects.
The move is President Joe Biden’s latest effort to roll back his predecessor’s four-year legacy of energy and environmental deregulation. Former President Donald Trump’s administration made a last-minute push to accelerate energy development on public lands, including by amending the so-called Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan just days before leaving office.
In the coming days, Biden’s Department of Interior will revoke the public comment period on those plan amendments, a spokesman for the agency said in an emailed statement.
Biden supports building more renewable energy installations on public lands, but his administration said the original DRECP balanced wind and solar development with conservation and outdoor recreation.
“The Trump administration’s proposal in its final days to re-open the plan is unnecessary and at odds with balanced land management,” Laura Daniel Davis, Interior’s principal deputy secretary for land and minerals management, said in a statement.
The DRECP was hatched jointly with the state of California during the presidency of Barack Obama and set aside areas for renewable energy development. Last month, Trump’s Interior said the changes were needed for California to meet its goal to phase out the use of fossil fuels.
Some wind and solar developers opposed the Obama-era strategy because they said it left millions of acres off-limits to their projects.
This month, the California Wind Energy Association sent a letter to Interior saying that the DRECP amendments proposed by the previous administration “may be consistent with the Administration’s climate policy goals and urge that it be considered.”
An Interior official would not comment on the letter.
This article is the work of the source indicated. Any opinions expressed in it are not necessarily those of National Wind Watch.
The copyright of this article resides with the author or publisher indicated. As part of its noncommercial educational effort to present the environmental, social, scientific, and economic issues of large-scale wind power development to a global audience seeking such information, National Wind Watch endeavors to observe “fair use” as provided for in section 107 of U.S. Copyright Law and similar “fair dealing” provisions of the copyright laws of other nations. Send requests to excerpt, general inquiries, and comments via e-mail.
Wind Watch relies entirely on User Funding |
(via Stripe) |
(via Paypal) |
Share: