The cancellation by the administration of US President Donald Trump of the country's largest solar project, Esmeralda 7, has caused confusion and concern among both Republicans and Democrats.
This was reported by CNN.
In the second week of October, the Bureau of Land Management of the US Department of the Interior quietly changed the status of the solar eco-project to "canceled" on its federal permits website. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of the Interior said the change in status was not related to the current government shutdown.
Esmeralda 7 is a complex of seven solar energy projects in rural Nevada that was supposed to generate up to 6.2 GW of energy. Its projected capacity would be enough to power 2 million homes.
Experts emphasized that this is an impressive amount of energy for the grid, which the United States needs due to the high demand from data centers related to artificial intelligence, in particular due to the growing needs of the residential sector.
What was the policy of the previous U.S. president regarding the solar power station
Under former U.S. President Joe Biden, the federal government was pushing the project through the process of obtaining federal permits to build the solar plant. The developers planned to use 118,000 acres of federal land in the Nevada desert as a place to place solar panels and batteries for storing solar energy.
Although the Biden administration gave the green light to the project, it remained controversial for some environmental groups and residents who feared that the huge size of the solar panels would affect critical wildlife habitat in the desert.
"It makes no sense to sacrifice climate improvement by sacrificing biodiversity. We don't see converting vast areas of public land to renewable energy as the right solution to the climate crisis," said Eric Molvar, executive director of the Western Watersheds project.
According to Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, the Trump administration's lack of transparency on wind and solar energy projects has caused chaos and confusion. Despite the fact that solar energy has become a major economic driver in Nevada.
As a reminder, the administration of US President Donald Trump is blocking 321 grants to finance 223 environmental projects worth $7.6 billion that were aimed at renewable energy and the US energy system.
The move comes after the US Department of Energy cut $3.7 billion in funding for industrial decarbonization in early June. On October 7, an additional list of 600 projects was announced that the Department of Energy intends to cancel. In particular, the projects on the list are worth $7.6 billion and total $20 billion.
