Obama administration deploys key clean energy initiatives following ACES win
Following its victory in the House with the passage of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), the Obama administration is rolling out a series of clean energy initiatives, eager to keep up the momentum following Friday’s vote.
On Monday, President Obama announced a series of new energy efficiency guidelines, including stricter standards on fluorescent and incandescent light. The measures announced could result in savings for consumers in the 2012 to 2042 period of up to $4 billion annually.
That same day, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced a plant to fast track the deployment of utility-scale solar in the west. The zoning initiative sets aside some 676,000 acres (273,684 hectares) of federal land for lease by clean energy companies, more than half — 351,000 acres in the Mojave Desert — are in California.
The executive order signed by Salazar streamlines the entire development process of solar projects: It both coordinates zoning and environmental studies, and prioritizes the processing of the projects.
The initiative affects 24 tracts of land administered by the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management. Besides California, the land is located in Nevada, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
The Bureau of Land Management is one of the key regulatory agencies in charge of approving clean energy projects. The agency has received about 470 renewable energy project applications, including 158 active solar applications, covering 1.8 million acres.
The announcement, which in effect expands the amount of land available for leasing by cleantech developers, could result in the installation of as much as 100,000 megawatts of solar electric generation capacity.
