The U.S. Dept. of the Inside’s Bureau of Land Administration (BLM) has canceled an environmental impression evaluate of Esmeralda 7, a proposed 6.2-GW photo voltaic + storage challenge in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The seven separate arrays that will have composed Esmeralda 7 have been sited on 62,300 acres of BLM land.
The Gemini Photo voltaic + Storage challenge in Nevada. Primergy
The challenge is listed as canceled below the Nationwide Environmental Coverage Act standing on the BLM’s website. Photo voltaic Energy World reached out to the BLM for remark, however was met with a voicemail stating no person is in workplace because of federal authorities shutdowns.
Esmeralda 7 entered the BLM’s purview in November 2023, and shortly after held durations for public remark and bureau challenge scoping. From the unique evaluate timeline, BLM deliberate to have a ruling on the challenge in April 2025.
“Whereas we await additional readability from BLM on its obvious resolution to abruptly cancel these photo voltaic tasks within the late levels of the evaluate course of, we stay deeply involved that this administration continues to flout the regulation to the detriment of customers, the grid, and America’s financial competitiveness,” stated Ben Norris, VP of regulatory affairs for the Photo voltaic Power Industries Affiliation (SEIA). “We’d like extra energy on the grid, quick, and the photo voltaic and storage business is able to present it, however we want the administration to get critical about actually attaining American power dominance.”
Esmeralda 7 was slated to be constructed subsequent to the proposed 525-kV Greenlink West transmission challenge, with all seven photo voltaic + storage arrays interconnecting to the Esmeralda substation. The proposed tasks have been: Lone Mountain Photo voltaic, Smoky Valley Photo voltaic, Gold Mud Photo voltaic, Nivloc Photo voltaic, Pink Ridge 1 and Pink Ridge 2. In response to an environmental impression assertion assembly held in July 2024, the arrays have been anticipated to take 5 years to construct with a constant workforce of 845 individuals.
SEIA been following the DOI’s added scrutiny for siting renewable energy projects on federal land. Throughout a roundtable assembly with members of the photo voltaic commerce press at RE+ 2025, Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA, stated this relating to that further oversight: “We’ve heard quite a lot of issues when it comes to the impression on non-public growth. The whole lot from, [developers] contacting the places of work of BLM and asking what the method is, and no person actually is aware of what the method is, to not listening to again from area places of work, as a result of there doesn’t appear to be a transparent route from the secretary’s workplace, relying on the place this the challenge is … I feel people are having some one-off conversations, attempting to navigate particular permits instantly with the Division of the Inside. However it’s my sense that this may be a cascading type of concern. Over time the log jam will get extra extreme as these techniques that have been by no means identified for his or her alacrity develop into much more cumbersome.”
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