“The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states — Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah…..fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land…Others warned the bureau against becoming mired in its own bureaucratic processes on solar energy, while parts of the West are already humming with new oil and gas development….Craig Cox, the executive director of the Interwest Energy Alliance, a renewable energy trade group, said he worried that the freeze would “throw a monkey wrench†into the solar energy industry at precisely the wrong time. ”
“Senator Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, wants a congressional probe into the proposed moratorium. “The fact that the BLM pops this out without people even knowing about it, especially when solar thermal looks extremely promising as a baseload [power source], is not right,†she says. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is the majority leader in the Senate, also condemns the BLM’s freeze, saying that it could “slow new development to a crawlâ€.”
http://www.economist.com/world/na/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11637342
