Overview

• The Bureau of Land Management updated its planning website on Thursday to list the Esmeralda 7 environmental review as "cancelled," providing no reason.
• Esmeralda 7 combined seven solar-and-storage projects from developers including NextEra Energy Resources, Leeward Renewable Energy, Arevia Power, Invenergy and ConnectGen on roughly 118,000 acres near Tonopah, Nevada.
• Reporting describes the plan as spanning about 185 square miles with capacity around 6.2 gigawatts, framed as enough electricity to power nearly 2 million homes.
• Permitting advanced under the Biden administration, but after President Donald Trump took office the anticipated final programmatic environmental impact statement was not released.
• In July, the administration assigned final wind and solar permitting decisions to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, and coverage characterizes the cancellation as a sign of a tougher stance on large renewable projects on federal land.