Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Sun editorial:

Flying solar in Nevada

All stakeholders, including the Air Force, should discuss potential solar plant sites

Correction: The following editorial has been amended to correct an error in the initial version as to the location of a proposed solar power plant.

No one ever said it would be easy to get a large-scale solar energy industry up and running in Southern Nevada, despite our abundant sunshine. As we said recently, one major obstacle is finding ways to streamline the permitting process that would allow transmission lines to transport solar-generated power from remote locations to urban consumers.

But The Washington Post on Saturday reported on another hurdle that could make it difficult for renewable energy plants to get off the drawing board. That hurdle is the Air Force.

SolarReserve, a Los Angeles company, had been negotiating with the Air Force for the past 18 months on a proposed $700 million solar plant in Southern Nevada. The plant would have generated enough power to serve roughly 50,000 homes.

But the newspaper reported that after the company agreed to build the plant 25 miles from Nellis Air Force Base (in fact, the proposal would have the plant built near Tonopah), the Air Force last week urged the federal government to reject the proposal altogether. The Air Force, reasoning that the solar plant would compromise classified aspects of the military’s flight training range in Nevada and interfere with radar, recommended instead that the plant be built 80 to 100 miles from the base.

To avoid a repeat of this situation, federal, state and local elected officials, business leaders and other stakeholders in solar energy should meet with Air Force representatives as soon as possible.

The Air Force should specify to the Bureau of Land Management and other relevant federal agencies those parts of Nevada that it believes ought to be made off limits to solar, wind or geothermal development.

Those specifics will save prospective renewable energy developers time and money by directing them to locations where there are no conflicts with the Air Force’s vital national security mission. It would also save the Air Force from having to sit down with developers, only to reject their plans later because of location concerns.

The urgency for clarifying these issues is that solar power has become a highly competitive industry not only among developers, but also among the states seeking that business. Nevada cannot afford to lose those opportunities.

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