Today, a bipartisan group of Western representatives and senators introduced the Public Lands and Renewable Energy Development Act of 2013.

I am feeling giddy. Let me tell you why.

Growing up on the East Coast, our town playground and basketball court were the extent of my understanding of public lands. Though our eastern states also have their fair share of state and federal forest land and park systems, my first experience with real public lands came during a cross country bicycle ride. I fell in love with the wide open spaces I didn’t have in my backyard back home.

On a bike it’s easy to see how much use we get out of our federal public lands—like the 285 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Hunting, fishing, hiking, all forms of energy development, ranching, off-road vehicle use, and incredible wildlife habitat to boot. Experiencing our Western public lands in person made me proud to live in America.

I’ve since learned more about the pressures our public lands are feeling, particularly from a rapidly changing climate and energy development decisions. National Wildlife Federation’s recent report, Wildlife in a Warming World, highlighted the impacts of increased drought, wildfire, and invasive species on big game, sagebrush habitat, and other sensitive wildlife

A Framework for Renewable Energy Development on Public Lands

So that gets us back to the bill introduced today by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) and others. It creates the framework for more efficient, responsible renewable energy development on public lands and would strategically direct the revenue from development to pay back local communities, fish and wildlife resources, and hunting and angling access potentially impacted by this clean energy development.

It’s a win-win for clean energy and wildlife conservation and you heard it right in the intro—supported by Westerners from both parties. That’s cause for celebration in and of itself!

In 2009, our public lands had zero approved solar energy projects and very few wind energy projects. With a lot of effort, this changed over the last three years, with now over 30 projects and 12GW permitted, enough power for 3-5 million homes per year.

To be frank, our current system for wind and solar development on public lands is woefully inefficient for every interested stakeholder—the clean energy industry and the wildlife advocate. It nearly always results in more conflict than necessary.

This bill helps solve these significant barriers to clean energy development and wildlife conservation. It also ensures some of the revenues from development on public lands goes back to impacted communities, particularly through a conservation fund for cumulative impacts to the landscape and sportsmen’s access.

As we embark on a clean energy future, there is a model to avoid. 140 years ago the U.S. Congress passed a law to promote mining and Western expansion, with provisions that hinder wildlife and habitat conservation to this day. For decades, campaigns have worked to fix that mining law.

Let’s not look back 30 years from now with the realization that we made the same policy mistakes in the rush to stop carbon pollution with wind and solar energy on public lands. Instead, let’s put in place now the right framework for efficient, sustainable development of wind and solar energy and help address its impacts with a conservation fund.

Learn more about NWF’s efforts to advocate for wildlife-friendly renewable energy >>

Offshore wind farm in Copenhagen (Photo: PEBondestad – Flickr)

Ocean biodiversity is at risk from ocean acidification, rising water temperatures and sea-level rise caused by carbon pollution and climate change. The offshore wind power generation needed to reduce the carbon pollution threatening the ocean and beyond is finally upon us.

With the long-awaited arrival of this massive source of clean energy comes the obligation to do it correctly for wildlife. That’s why we’re thrilled today to have reached a landmark agreement with major offshore wind industry leaders and marine conservation organizations to protect the critically-endangered North Atlantic right whale—helping to ensure wind power can both stem the impacts of climate change and minimize its own impacts on marine wildlife.

Right Whales in Jeopardy

Scientists estimate that less than 500 North Atlantic right whales are currently roaming our Atlantic shorelines.

Right whale mother and calf (Photo: NOAA NMFS)

Right whales are sensitive to underwater noises, and there is concern that the early survey activities of offshore wind developers could disturb migrating whales and divert them off their typical course into areas where they may be more vulnerable to predation from sharks and orcas or collision with ocean vessels. With so few individuals left, scientists have suggested that the loss of even one or two female right whales poses a threat to the population as a whole.

Win-win for Whales & Offshore Wind Energy

We need rapid, responsible wind energy development in the Atlantic that avoids these types of unacceptable impacts. The exciting news is that the leaders in the U.S. offshore wind industry agree.

With colleagues at the Conservation Law Foundation, the Natural Resources Defense Council, New England Aquarium, and companies like Deepwater Wind, I spent the last few months navigating both the science on the right whale and the needs of a new industry. The agreement we reached in this first-of-its-kind collaboration balances the needs of industry, the conservation community and the right whale.

The agreement provides additional protections for the North Atlantic right whale, primarily by reducing or avoiding sound impacts from exploratory activities that developers use to determine where to build wind farms, such as the construction of temporary towers that measure weather conditions and underwater surveys that assess the geology just beneath the ocean floor.

The developers implementing these voluntary measures will have the greatest certainty of avoiding unacceptable impacts, and that in turn will remove barriers to the type of efficient, responsible permitting and development process NWF and ocean advocates can support.

Looking Forward

Our sights now turn to New England, an important location for right whale and wind energy, where similar measures could be developed. This is an ongoing venture, so we’ll strive to build support for these measures from more stakeholder and industry voices, and see them ultimately implemented.

I’m proud to work for an organization that seeks innovative collaboration as a tool to achieve conservation victories, and I’m hopeful that today’s agreement is the just the crest of the wave to bring responsible offshore wind power ashore—pun intended.

Help protect wildlife today by supporting offshore wind projects—take action now!

“Solar power is an important new source of renewable domestic energy. Done right, we can produce energy, generate jobs and conserve hunting and fishing on our public lands.”

Kate Zimmerman, Senior Policy Advisor for NWF

Photo by Flickr's Living Off Grid

“I’m directing my administration to allow the development of clean energy on enough public land to power 3 million homes,” the president declared in the State of the Union address on Tuesday evening.

Sounds great in theory, but how does he propose managing the complexity of both promoting such a land-intensive use and conserving vital fish and wildlife habitats?

Finally, a Plan

For the past three years the U.S. Department of Interior and Department of Energy have been developing a solar energy program for public lands in six Western states that can achieve both of those goals. Last year, the agencies unveiled an environmental review of the program and accepted public comments until last Friday. Now, these comments will lead to the implementation of a final solar program later this year – a roadmap for sustainable, environmentally responsible solar energy development.

At the heart of what it is a very complex proposal is a very simple idea – Solar Energy Zones (SEZs). These are areas of public land with high energy potential – accessible to transmission – that have been reviewed and determined to already be degraded or otherwise have low potential for negative impacts to wildlife, habitat, recreation, or other uses.

Sportsmen Speak on Solar

To better understand this planning process for appropriately locating and designing solar energy facilities, NWF helped pulled together sportsmen from across the nation last December near Las Vegas. This event clarified to policy makers the needs and concerns of hunters and anglers in this process, and set the stage for opportunities for sportsmen to engage as Solar Energy Zones are designated, giving them a seat at the table as plans are developed to mitigate the impact solar development on desert wildlife.

NWF Supports …

NWF wholeheartedly endorses the designation of Solar Energy Zones. The SEZs represent a new approach to meeting our clean energy goals in a wildlife-friendly manner – one that will avoid the fragmentation of important wildlife habitats that has occurred as a result of other commercial activities on public lands, such as oil and gas drilling. The best path going forward will guide development to identified public lands, consolidating related infrastructure and resulting in less total land disturbance. Needed clean energy can be built faster, cheaper, with less opposition from other public land users, and in a sustainable manner.

With some additional work to limit development outside the designated zones, exclude vital habitat and movement corridors for Desert bighorn sheep, elk, pronghorn, and Greater sage-grouse from development zones, and provide adequate mitigation for habitat losses, the proposed solar zoning framework represents the kind of initiatives NWF is pursuing in removing barriers from wildlife-friendly renewable energy.

Department of the Interior

•  The approval of this Administration’s 24^th and 25^th big renewable energy projects on public lands, the Sonoran Solar Energy Project (Arizona) and the Tule Wind Project (California), which together will provide 486 MW of clean electricity.
• The kickoff of a public comment period to collect information about the proposed route and environmental and commercial interest issues for the Atlantic Wind Connection, an undersea transmission line that has been proposed from New Jersey down to Virginia, with the goal of removing a key barrier to offshore wind energy generation far off our coasts.

It will be a huge challenge to replace fossil-energy sources at a both a large enough scale and at a fast enough pace to protect the wildlife and habitat we love from irreversible global warming impacts. We know that large-scale wind and solar energy projects, on both public and private lands and waters, will have to contribute to the solution, along with energy efficiency, solar roofs, and other actions.  So National Wildlife Federation has called on President Obama to have the courage to rapidly pursue big clean energy projects while simultaneously requiring wildlife-friendly approaches to development, preventing development in sensitive habitat, and driving clean energy to the lowest conflict locations.

Secretary Salazar’s announcements hold evidence that we can continue to be both smart and swift with clean energy.  An offshore transmission backbone should allow offshore wind energy to reach more of the public, and building the line far offshore will them make it more cost effective to place wind projects well clear of known migratory bird pathways much closer to shore.  Meanwhile, the environmental review process for the Sonoran Solar Project resulted in suggestions from local stakeholders and led the project proponent to reduce the project’s footprint by 1,600 acres and reduce the project’s water consumption by 98%!

Sea turtles off the Atlantic coast and our cherished Western landscapes are threatened by the increasingly intense impacts of climate change.  With wind and solar energy making up only around 3 percent of the nation’s overall electricity generation, NWF will keep leaning on decision-makers to protect our wildlife and habitat from carbon pollution by taking bold steps forward on clean energy.  And we’ll keep demanding the strongest standards and smartest planning to avoid negative impacts of clean energy development.

Help protect bighorn sheep by sending a message to the Department of Interior, urging it to move forward with wildlife-friendly solar energy development.