US moves to cancel one of the largest solar farms
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6.2GW is huge. What an incredible sad loss.
Meanwhile there is a beautiful article showing in photos China's recent 16.2GW solar install Talatan in the Qinghai Province. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/business/china-solar-tibe...
The Chinese have the right approach: Bringing the cost-per-watt down using massive deployments of renewables and ultra high voltage transmission. We were already in the backseat, and now we're not even in the same car.
At the same time, these AI companies currently have insanely deep pockets and mindshare, and I assume they are lobbying hard for cheap energy?
In the US they are actively causing chaos with much worse impacts likely.
I assume incumbents have been demanding compensation for their "stranded assets". eg All their "known" reserves of oil, heavily inflated, propping up their market caps.
Biden Admin's IRA had boondoggles (for incumbents) like carbon capture, hydrogen fuel, and e-fuels. I assume it was mostly plausibly deniable pork.
I know that you already know:
Yes, we need to massively to fund R&D for All The Things, for the draw down. Even the moonshots.
No, none of that moonshot nascent stuff will be mature enough to help us reach net-zero. It takes decades to progress from research to industrial build out. (Govt now has a technology readiness model to better guide investment. Sorry, I forget its official name.)
What the skeptics (eg of the rainbow colors of hydrogen) didn't grok is that climate crisis is a hostage negotiation. Pretending these unproven techs were mature is just laundering the extortion payouts.
Hilariously, IMHO, the incumbents were getting a better deal under the Biden Admin. All those execs have gone full Gordon Gecko, snatching a better (short-term) deal for themselves, to the detriment of shareholders.
Oh, the irony.
Assume we get another Democratic Admin. Prospects for another hostage release deal are much dimmer. Renewable will be that much further along. And after the incumbents burned all their goodwill by sabotaging the prior payout deal, methinks the Dems will want some scalps.
Coal will be fully dead. Accelerating deployment of solar + battery, despite the roadblocks, will moot grid related permitting reform. Consumers will demand much cheaper and better electrified products. Etc, etc.
Today, only natural gas generation is cheaper than solar + battery, and only because of subsidies and tariffs. At best, the current Admin is just delaying the inevitable. At worst, they've completely obliterated USA economy, manufacturing, GDP, etc for a generation.
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-pr...
> "Conservation advocates, local government leaders and nearby residents have expressed concerns about the cumulative environmental impacts of the proposed Esmeralda 7 project, which in addition to covering a huge swath of desert lands would have also included miles of roads and associated transmission lines."
> "They have argued for placing onshore utility-scale projects on previously disturbed sites and expanding the use of rooftop solar."
> "The Esmeralda 7 project “would have destroyed significant archaeology sites, rare plants, bighorn sheep habitat and wilderness quality lands,” said Kevin Emmerich, a co-founder of Nevada-based Basin and Range Watch."
> "The cancellation of the project “will give us a chance to protect the tremendous resources of the area, including beautiful and wild mountain ranges and valleys, rare plant populations, and bighorn sheep,” said Laura Cunningham, a biologist with Western Watersheds Project."
> "“Paleontological fossil beds [the Esmeralda Formation] here were formative to understanding the geological history of the Great Basin,” Cunningham added. “This is good news for recreationists and for conservation efforts of an amazing landscape.”"
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/10/10/trump-interior-depa...
Thats rich.
Nevada regulators just killed rooftop solar, through a first-in-the-nation implementation of a demand charge for residential customers. People who put solar on their roofs will still get hit with demand charges when the sun goes down and in the summer it’ll be $30-70/mo. Negating a significant portion of their anticipated solar savings.
The reasoning appears to be forcing politically-connected projects to be subject to the same environmental reviews as every other project, including other clean energy projects that are not politically connected. As a matter of principle I agree the rules should be uniformly applied.
If the environmental review process is that onerous, which it is, then we should reform the process for everyone rather than allow politically connected people buy waivers.
but we can hope
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/decl...
But they don't believe in solar which means they accidentally are making their claimed emergency worse and helping their fossil donors to make more money. Like Trump expressly promised to do in return for their donations.
“Instead of pursuing a programmatic level environmental analysis, the applicants will now have the option to submit individual project proposals to the BLM to more effectively analyze potential impacts,” the email continued.
https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2025/10/13/trump-nv-solar-pro...
He said when a source is known to lie the proper weight to apply to anything they say is 0.0.
> On Thursday, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) canceled an environmental review of the Esmeralda Seven Solar Project
If it was me, this is what I would have him do: Pull out of the Paris climate accord, cancel renewable energy projects, cancel EV tax credits. Trump has done all that.
In fact Trump went a step further:
Trump is using tariffs to pressure other countries to relax their pledges to fight climate change and instead burn more oil, gas and coal. See: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/27/climate/trump-internation...
In October 2022, literally a week after meeting Putin for the first time, Elon Musk started mirroring Russian propaganda [2], even though he had been a staunch supporter of Ukraine until that point. A week later, he would announce that he had secured funding to buy Twitter. Immediately, he reversed course on his "Free Speech Absolutism" and started pumping out right wing propaganda. Not long after, he would announce that he was leaving the democratic party, and not long after that, he would endorse Trump, and then not long after that, he would begin campaigning with trump and becoming his single largest donor and chief election meddler.
When Musk was forced to disclose his investors, the list [3] included:
* the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia
* several Saudi hedge funds, including those owned by billionaires that miraculously survived the 2017 purge with their wealth intact.
* several Silicon Valley VCs who had recently announced raising significant funding from Saudi Arabia, including one that had just hired the sons of sanctioned Russian Oligarchs in Putin's inner circle [4].
* several individuals with ties to Saudi Arabia or Russia.
* (unrelated but hilarious and unsurprising) P Diddy, who knew he was in future need of a presidential pardon.
TL;DR: Mohammed bin Salman owes his position as Crown Prince to Donald Trump, and Donald Trump owes his second term to Mohammed bin Salman.
[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/saudi-crown-prince-jared-kus...
[1] https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/437292-kushners-...
[2] https://www.npr.org/2022/10/04/1126714896/elon-musk-ukraine-...
[3] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/x-investors-helped-elon-musk-...
[4] https://www.aa.com.tr/en/science-technology/x-shareholders-l...
The 6.2 GW here would have been significant.
What does this even mean? Why the hell does it have to be so hard to get anything done in this country?
> “Friends of Nevada Wilderness is thrilled that this poorly sited project is dead,” said Shaaron Netherton, the group’s executive director. “In the push to get this particular project through, the BLM ignored the importance of this region’s cultural significance, biological significance and the fact that it is one of the most intact landscapes remaining in Nevada,” Netherton added.
I will also save some ire for these people. This is literally desert wasteland sitting alongside a freeway. It's hard to believe that someone spent time and money on this cause.
Of course maybe I’m overthinking it and assuming a conspiracy where stupidity is a simpler explanation. There were climate activists protesting wind farms in Germany.
"Desert wasteland" teems with life, just maybe not the kind that most people care about. Land use is one of the sticking points of the energy transition, both for agriculture and biodiversity.
One of the only plusses to nuclear power is reduced land use, though it has it's own water use and waste issues. Much better alternatives are rooftop solar and residential batteries, and grid scale batteries located closer to where they are needed for industry, commerce, and high-density housing. It really kills the need for these large scale deployments and the costly transmission lines to service them.
Rooftop seems expensive, if not done as part of a roof replacement. And even then it's expensive.
If we had deserts that would be a great place to put up solar.
> If we had deserts that would be a great place to put up solar.
I guess the EU at least has some large projects in North Africa which is trying to combat desertification. Looks like a win-win, but I don't know much about it.
it may be a plus for solar if it can be shown that the shadow from the panels is a good thing in those cases
There is also probably enough toxic/polluted wasteland around so that solar can be built there without taking "good" lands.
It may be that AI will happen to be the savior of this planet - by creating huge demand for energy it will allow the cheapest - i.e. renewables - to get into dominating market position, and may be Big Tech would even get into and productize the fusion.
Agreed.
I think solar installations would make more sense for remediation of desertified or polluted land instead of disrupting existing nature reserves.
I think rooftop solar is also excellent, but only in theory. In practice, I feel like rooftop solar allows public utilities to abdicate their responsibility. It diminishes the affect of collective pressure on major energy producers to hold up their end of the bargain to invest in clean energy because it shifts costs to homeowners and effectively makes them a very weak competitor to big energy producers. A power grid full of smart systems and robust transmission lines is an amazing resource - but it is very capital intensive. How do we replace that with rooftop solar that many homeowners seek loans to install? How does that incentivize power companies, who are allowed to operate monopolies, to invest in clean energy infrastructure?
Australia has managed to do it. Installers are tripping over each other to put solar on roofs here.
> How does that incentivize power companies, who are allowed to operate monopolies, to invest in clean energy infrastructure?
Arbitrage. If every house has solar and battery, that's a huge load off the grid, but there's still apartments, businesses, and industry that need power, especially at night. Grid-scale batteries take the excess from households, and distribute to those that need power. There would still be need for grid-scale renewable generation, just hopefully not built on existing nature reserves.
This is why I'd rather a rule like "you must have enough solar to cover your aircon power over a hot summer" and then gridscale the rest.
Instead, I too will enjoy my almost-aristocratic landowner status and will be upgrading my solar setup in the near future.
As somebody who lives in the Southwest US, thank you. There are so many people on HN who think the desert is just Martian dunes to be paved over like a Civ tile.
Just in the hills around me there are 30 species of plant, century-old trees, snakes, lizards, horny toads, bobcats, coyotes, hare, quail, multitudes of ants, the incredible red velvet mite, roadrunners (yes they’re real), flies, wasps, native bumblebees, mice, god it goes on and on. And the soil is encrusted, literally, with countless microbiota. In fact a single vehicle smashing it can damage that crust for years.
I know we need renewables, and yes, the Southwest is a great place for solar. But there is real ecological damage to some of the most pristine places left in America involved in developing unused land.
I take no position on the development which is under discussion here, or whether the cancellation was fair. I haven’t researched it, and probably never will. I’m just sick of the “it’s just desert, who cares, paint it with solar/oil fields/asphalt” attitude that’s everywhere.
However, there is a lot of it, and as far as impacted animals per acre, it’s got to be near the bottom. Thus of all the places to locate big solar projects, huge expanses of low life density flat land with lots have sun seems like it would minimize the harm.
Also what people call "desert" isn't, like, the Sahara. There are many kinds of arid and semi-arid landscapes that people tend to underestimate because they aren't really habitable by humans or suitable for growing agricultural crops. The kinds of landscapes I'm referring are highlighted on the Friends of Nevada Wilderness website:
https://www.nevadawilderness.org/
It's not a flat plane with a few rocks and a lone cactus on it. That's just the cartoon characterisation that springs to mind when we think "desert".
There is plentiful desert to expand upon and plenty of expansion coming due to ongoing climate impact. Desert fauna is not in danger, at any almost any rate.
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/04/25/ethanol-corn-uses-far...
> U.S. corn growth for fuel – not food occupies 29.7 million acres. A study from Cornell University finds that corn grown for ethanol fuel requires 31 times as much land as solar per unit of energy.
> Moreover, the researchers found that if 46% of the land currently used to farm corn for ethanol was converted to solar, the projects would generate enough electricity for the United States to decarbonize its electricity system by its 2050 goal.
This will never ever happen, farmers would simply switch to different crops. I'm 100% behind getting rid of the ethanol mandate, but that's because it's completely counterproductive to its stated goal of reducing pollution because it requires more energy to grow the corn, fertilize the corn, harvest the corn, and then process it into ethanol than simply pumping, transporting, and refining oil. Also, cars also get worse mileage on gasoline that has ethanol due to the lower energy content.
More to the point, if we can't build a solar plant here then we're never going to build one in this country, let alone the rare earth mines or anything else we would need for a green transition.
You wildly underestimate what lives in an arid landscape. I don't blame you, because you can't really know unless you've spent time in these landscapes, and have the inclination to observe them.
> More to the point, if we can't build a solar plant here then we're never going to build one in this country
There's plenty of already disturbed land that can be used before decimating nature parks. Be it vacant agricultural land, decommissioned commercial real estate, etc. But like I said, roof-top solar and grid-scale batteries are still largely under-utilised and have the added benefit of not needing expensive transmission lines. This will become especially true as the cost of batteries continue to steeply decline.
I've actually spent a lot of time in Nevada and the SW. You're right that it's gorgeous and has its own ecology. But out of all the places that someone could say "not in my backyard", rural Nevada has probably some of the least claim as anywhere on this earth. It's vast, the wildlife is literally some of the most resilient on earth, and thanks to global warming, it's one of the few bioregions that's actually growing.
Also, BLM land is specifically not nature preserve. Public lands are set aside for everything from forestry to mining to military testing to 4x4 racing. These are not actually pristine wildernesses being destroyed.
> But some conservationists alarmed by the proposed rollout of large solar projects in Nevada and other Western states celebrated the demise of Esmeralda 7, saying as designed it took up up far too much land.
> “Friends of Nevada Wilderness is thrilled that this poorly sited project is dead,” said Shaaron Netherton, the group’s executive director.
> “In the push to get this particular project through, the BLM ignored the importance of this region’s cultural significance, biological significance and the fact that it is one of the most intact landscapes remaining in Nevada,” Netherton added.
I have two conflicting opinions on the conservation value of the land. It might be that some significant part of it is worth saving, or perhaps FONW have become corrupt.
Sure, there's overgrazing in places, but that's a matter of degree. The fact remains that cattle grazing is a necessary step to replace what was lost, if preservation of what remains of native species is desired.
Because some engineering specialty lobbyist wants it to be that way to drive business to his clients, he cooks up some narrative about how more review will save the planet and HN takes it at face value.
You see this crap with every sort of permitting. Except perhaps in the rare cases it constrains the biggest entities (e.g. DuPont dumping crap in the river or whatever) all these BS processes and requirements do is raise the richness floor of who can play the game. The BigCos can pay for the pretexts to get the permission they need to keep doing whatever, free from the competition from everyone down-market who can't afford that.
What they should do, scientifically, is adapt, like all organisms.
The irony is those demanding we change our behavior to reverse climate change are the ones actually fighting to keep humans from changing by adapting to changing climatic conditions, and so they are the biggest threat to human survival as a species.
We're gonna burn every deep of oil. Petroleum use goes up every year, regardless.
This is usually preceded by those that can afford to have played got to that point because they too did not follow any regulations when they started. They are only now willing to follow regulations because they can afford to knowing that it is a worthy expense to keep new competition from starting
An Immense Solar Project Just Got Canceled Under Trump (11 points, 5 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45542159
Trump administration has killed a massive solar power project in Nevada (15 points, 8 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45540426
but at a certain point in time -- there are facts you can't dispute. utility solar is one of the cheapest forms of energy there is. & a massive plus when you consider places like arizona.
so what's trump admin endgame ?
Cruelty and revenge
The rest of the world considers Trump and his administration 'a scam', and aren't falling for it. The side effects of all the bullshit they've pulled and continue to pull is that the rest of the world is playing together more nicely with one another, and the US is screwing over their own economy for the longer term.
Just for the record i know Trump is corrupt, a felon, impeached etc etc. and it's pointless to attribute any decisions he or his minions make to reasons any normal person would describe as "rational" or anything other then serving his own interests. So please don't bother mentioning it again thank you. There, now i've cut the discussion thread by 75%.
Trump claims to want to bring back manufacturing. Manufacturing is material inputs plus labor or automation. American labor is expensive. The only way to compete is automation.
Time and time again studies show that energy cost is the main determinant of factory output and manufacturing capacity. Cheap energy equals more stuff. That's basically it. Anyone who is canceling energy projects is not brining back manufacturing.
I'm not familiar with large scale electrical. Do you have examples?
Bitcoin mining is a more unfortunate one but also pretty typical.
Buying a bunch of expensive equipment and operating it 10 hours a day vs. 24 hours a day is usually not economical. The uses where this make sense are quite rare.
For example training AI models is often cited - but when you're buying $1B of GPUs to stuff in a datacenter that have a 3 year useful lifespan - you are effectively cutting your amortization schedule in half. It would require some really expensive energy to make that pencil out.
Energy storage of various types are probably the currently best bet, but those also have the same problem. Vehicle charging is a clear win, but also a low hanging fruit that is already well in play.
Why not put machines on 24 hour schedules for their first couple years, then cheap intermittent power for the next five?
If you can do demand based pricing, you could even end up with new time arbitrage business models. A battery farm or hydro facility stores energy when rates are cheap and discharges when rates go up.
It’s safe at this point to always assume the opposite of what he claims. Seems pretty clear he and his cohorts are going to cancel everything, funnel money into their pockets, then buy up everything for pennies on the dollar. Everyone in the US, and perhaps globally, will suffer while they create an ultra-corrupt New Gilded Age that makes the first one look like amateur hour.
Trump claims a lot of stuff. It's all gaslighting*.
* Speaking of things Trump would claim to be for. Electric lighting is effete foolishness that makes your testicles shrivel!
With the precedents handed down from Trump, that could likely be concluded before the courts have a chance to weigh in. The owners will be entitled to cash damages. But the industries will have been politically destroyed.
(Note: leave natural gas alone. It’s cheap and relatively clean. It’s also geopolitical export currency.)
I agree, but if the precedent is set it doesn’t go back in the bag because it skips an administration. Unilaterally disarming doesn’t work.
There's no reason ICE should be protected from the courts for arresting US citizens.
> no reason ICE should be protected from the courts for arresting US citizens
Nor those in the military executing unlawful orders.
It's a kneejerk response designed to obviate a political problem. Historically these will be perceived as vengeful and undemocratic.
> it's just good policy.
It's good policy if you only consider _one_ outcome. Good policy is made from compromise. Yours explicitly denies that, to the point where I'm very sure there are _better_ policy choices available to us.
> We could pay every person working at a fossil fuel job their full wage to do absolutely nothing until they die and still come out ahead.
I'd like to see your math on this.
> Climate change isn't a joke
Then shipping manufactured items from China should be a huge concern. If you're not making the replacement equipment in the USA for the USA then you are just ignorantly displacing the problem. To the point where this all begins to look like a modern colonial strategy solving local problems at the expense of global outcomes.
They're vengeful. I don't think they're undemocratic.
> Good policy is made from compromise
Not always. Sometimes there is a correct answer. For energy costs and political stability, continuing to subsidise coal has turned into a corrupt and expensive mistake.
Fair; however, you do share this country with people who do not explicitly agree with all your decisions. Which is why I flagged this as a /perception/. Those still have actual consequences whether you agree with them or not.
> For energy costs and political stability, there seems to be only one here.
You're ignoring national security and resistance to natural disasters. There's the part of the argument you want to have; unfortunately, it explicitly touches on several other complicated ones. Ignoring them introduces unnecessary peril to your own stated goals.
If climate change is that important then you should really be seeking to rationalize the common concerns surrounding this approach and working to address them through incorporation into your strategy. There's more than one thing to "get right" here.
That doesn’t make a policy democratic. To the extent there is good criticism of my suggestion, it’s in it being disrespectful to the rule of law.
> If climate change is that important
I never mentioned climate change.
Coal is expensive to burn. It creates particulate emissions that are locally hazardous. And it funds political interests that do shit like shut down an 80% complete wind farm or under-construction solar panel.
I’m arguing for acting decisively to moderate energy costs, safeguard our health and remove an increasingly-toxic special interest from the board.
Absolutely. I wouldn’t touch natural gas. We make it. It burns cleanly. It’s cheap.
Once you have paid him the Danegeld
You never get rid of the Dane
- Rudyard Kipling
That said, I would be 100% onboard with a future administration applying a massive tax on the wealthy to fund solar plants, rooftops, and wind energy - 100% paid for by the wealthy who are profiting from this administration at the expense of our lives.
Totally agree. I’m talking about taking out heavy machinery. Turbines. Elevators. Generators.
I’d also argue for doing this on federal lands, or federally-permitted equipment, first.
Not government checks, but from the private industry that displaces coal/oil.
The project was given preferential treatment by Biden, allowing them to skip environmental review process required for other energy projects on BLM land in Nevada. This is canceling the preferential treatment, forcing them to do the environmental review to the same standard as other energy projects in Nevada, with the costs implied.
Geothermal energy projects in Nevada have been buried in endless environmental reviews by Democrat administrations for decades. It smells a lot like patronage to selectively waive environmental review requirements for preferred energy projects. There may be an "own the libs" aspect to it but that isn't the story.
If the normal environmental review process doesn't serve a real purpose or makes these energy projects infeasibly expensive then we should be reducing and reforming the environmental review process, not letting administrations decide which energy projects are subject to it.
This administration has literally stated this goal out loud.
Anything that Biden did, anything that Obama did = bad. That’s it. That’s all.
The headline would be better written as “some rich guy no longer gets to skip normal environmental procedures for permanently occupying public land”.
Public land should remain that way, forever. Stop selling our children’s future for profit, no matter the cause.
This sounds quite ironic when juxtaposed with the fact that the cause in question is solar power.
The previous generations destroyed public lands with dumping, dams, mines, etc in the name of progress or whatever, and the people that extracted the wealth packed their things and left the public with the mess to clean up. These procedures were established to sort of roadblock that, but even then it's still wrong. It's time to learn from the past. Decimating and absolutely destroying public land is something that shouldn't be on the table by alleged environmentalists.