Four federal agencies released the draft Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) on September 23, 2014. The DRECP aims to provide renewable energy project developers with a streamlined permitting process under the federal and California Endangered Species Acts while preserving, restoring, and enhancing 37 endangered species and their habitats.

The DRECP will also designate where renewable energy projects can and cannot be built. Taking into account current land use restrictions and proposed restrictions that would be imposed by the DRECP, of the 22.5 million acres that the plan covers, only approximately 1 million acres would be available under the preferred alternative identified in the DRECP. Of these Development Focus Areas (DFAs), roughly 80% would be on private lands.

The streamlined permitting process for endangered species would be offered to projects within DFAs while projects inconsistent with the DRECP or outside of DFAs would most likely be subject to a longer review. Avoidance measures and compensatory mitigation standards for endangered species would also change under the DRECP.

The DFA planning process involved substantial reliance on species habitat and distribution modeling and coordination with public and private stakeholders. 

Comments on the plan will be accepted until February 23, 2015.

Other factors, such as wildlife corridors for threatened and endangered species, already restrict where solar can and cannot be built in California’s deserts. Check out this habitat suitability and connectivity analysis Panorama conducted in the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County. The paper discusses, among other things, inconsistencies between habitat predictions in the DRECP Baseline Biology Report and field survey results for bighorn sheep and desert tortoise. Incomplete or unsubstantiated studies may wrongly constrict areas available for solar development.