Interior taps stimulus funds for renewable energy production
Bureau of Land Management will open new offices in four Western states to process lease applications.
Officials at the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management are drawing up plans to staff four new offices devoted to processing applications from energy companies seeking to lease federal land to produce electricity from wind and solar power.
The offices will be in California, Nevada, Wyoming and Arizona. The agency also is planning to field teams of experts in New Mexico, Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Oregon to expedite the review and permitting processes for renewable energy projects.
A top priority for the new staff will be tackling the backlog of more than 200 solar and 25 wind energy project applications. Applicants also have expressed interest in testing future wind projects at an additional 200 locations.
It's not clear yet how many people BLM will hire for the new offices and teams across the West. Cindy Wertz, a spokeswoman at the BLM's Wyoming state office said the agency expected to hire nine people there, who will work at BLM sites throughout southwest Wyoming.
"We're working on the position descriptions right now," she said. Wertz predicted it would take about six months to identify the desired skills, advertise for the open slots and hire staff.
The Interior Department is investing about $41 million to facilitate large-scale production of renewable energy on public land through the $787 billion economic stimulus package Congress passed earlier this year.
"At no time in our history has the need for a new energy policy been so urgent," said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar at a wind energy conference in Chicago on Tuesday. He said the convergence of high unemployment, the nation's increasing dependence on foreign fuel sources and growing concern about carbon emissions all point to the need to develop clean, renewable domestic energy supplies.
Salazar estimated that wind can generate as much as 20 percent of the nation's electricity by 2030 and create 250,000 jobs in the process. The wind projects currently proposed on BLM lands would provide almost 1,400 megawatts of new capacity -- enough to power more than 400,000 homes -- and would be ready for construction by the end of 2010.
During the same period, energy companies have proposed solar projects in California, Arizona and New Mexico that could produce 6,000 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1.8 million homes, he said.