The U.S. Dept. of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has canceled an environmental impact review of Esmeralda 7, a proposed 6.2-GW solar + storage project in Esmeralda County, Nevada. The seven separate arrays that would have composed Esmeralda 7 were sited on 62,300 acres of BLM land.
The Gemini Solar + Storage project in Nevada. Primergy
The project is listed as canceled under the National Environmental Policy Act status on the BLM’s website. Solar Power World reached out to the BLM for comment, but was met with a voicemail stating nobody is in office due to federal government shutdowns.
Esmeralda 7 entered the BLM’s purview in November 2023, and shortly after held periods for public comment and bureau project scoping. From the original review timeline, BLM planned to have a ruling on the project in April 2025.
Esmeralda 7 was slated to be built next to the proposed 525-kV Greenlink West transmission project, with all seven solar + storage arrays interconnecting to the Esmeralda substation. The proposed projects were: Lone Mountain Solar, Smoky Valley Solar, Gold Dust Solar, Nivloc Solar, Red Ridge 1 and Red Ridge 2. According to an environmental impact statement meeting held in July 2024, the arrays were expected to take five years to build with a consistent workforce of 845 people.
The Solar Energy Industries Association has been following the DOI’s added scrutiny for siting renewable energy projects on federal land.
During a roundtable meeting with members of the solar trade press at RE+ 2025, Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of SEIA, said this regarding that additional oversight: “We’ve heard a variety of things in terms of the impact on private development. Everything from, [developers] contacting the offices of BLM and asking what the process is, and nobody really knows what the process is, to not hearing back from field offices, because there doesn’t seem to be a clear direction from the secretary’s office, depending on where this the project is … I think folks are having some one-off conversations, trying to navigate specific permits directly with the Department of the Interior. But it is my sense that this might be a cascading kind of issue. Over time the log jam gets more severe as these systems that were never known for their alacrity become even more cumbersome.”
