The US Department of Energy and the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management have released the “Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement” (FPEIS) for utility-scale solar energy operations on public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and New Mexico. This “solar roadmap” estimates we will be able to harness 23,700 megawatts from 285,000 acres of developed lands, enough to power 7 million US homes with renewable energy.

285,000 acres might sound substantial, but everything we do involves trade offs. Deciding to pursue one opportunity inherently means not pursuing another, hence the name opportunity cost. But 285,000 acres only make up one ten-thousandth of the United States’ total acreage, meaning that from one hundredth of one percent of our land we could supply power to 2.3% of our country’s population. Seems like a good trade off to me. To the sun god!

JM Kincaid