“We have amazingly special places here,” U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell said in a news conference at a desert wind farm near Palm Springs with U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer and other officials releasing the multi-agency draft plan.
By taking a look at the desert as a whole, Jewell said, the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan’s designers are ensuring “the areas that should be protected are set aside. The areas that should be developed are streamlined” for building utility-scale renewable energy plants.
The plan released Tuesday recommends designating a total of 2 million acres as appropriate sites for future solar, wind and geothermal projects. Another 4.9 million acres under the U.S. Bureau of Land Management would be set aside as conservation areas, if the draft plan is adopted.
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