Over 40 percent of the lands in Malheur County have been designated as core habitat for sage grouse by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife ("ODFW"). Other counties in southeastern Oregon are also heavily affected. ODFW’s approach was to simply recommend against any development in core habitat, without consideration whether off-site mitigation could result

As my colleagues Kristen Castaños and Melissa Foster posted on the Stoel Rives California Environmental Law Blog, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced today that it will publish the Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (“Solar PEIS”) for solar energy development in six southwestern states—Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, and Utah.  The Solar PEIS is a major step forward in the permitting of utility-scale solar energy on public lands in the West.   

The Solar PEIS will establish solar energy zones with access to existing or planned transmission and with the fewest resource conflicts and provide incentives for development within those zones.  The roadmap set forth in the Solar PEIS will make for faster, more streamlined permitting of large-scale solar projects on these public lands.  The focus of the Solar PEIS is on Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) lands that are most suitable for solar energy development.  It identifies 17 Solar Energy Zones (“SEZs”), totaling about 285,000 acres of public lands, as priority areas for utility-scale solar development.  The Solar PEIS also notes the potential for additional zones through ongoing and future regional planning processes and allows for utility-scale solar development on approximately 19 million acres in variance areas lying outside of identified SEZs.Continue Reading U.S. Department of Interior Moves to Streamline Solar Development in the West

The Oregon Department of Energy (ODOE) has issued new temporary BETC rules. The purpose of these rules, according to ODOE, is to clarify how the Section 1603 Grant will be deducted from BETC project costs. In an apparent reversal of ODOE’s recent position during the Tier Two and Tier Three application phases, the temporary rules

Earlier this year, the Oregon Department of Energy (“ODOE”) allocated $10 million in tax credits for renewable energy projects with costs of less than $500,000 (“Tier One Projects”). On Wednesday, October 13, ODOE announced that it will no longer accept applications for Tier One Projects because as of October 11 ODOE had received applications for