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DP Daniel Palkin On Volts

“Federal lands make up 21% of the lower 48. They account for 3 or 4% respectively of each of our wind, solar, and geothermal. If you look at a map of federal lands across the country overlaid with utility-scale wind and solar development, you can see the wind and solar development filling in in the negative of all the federal land. It is deliberately avoiding it.”

Volts · Climate & Energy · October 2026

“Federal lands make up 21% of the lower 48. They account for 3 or 4% respectively of each of our wind, solar, and geothermal. If you look at a map of federal lands across the country overlaid with utility-scale wind and solar development, you can see the wind and solar development filling in in the negative of all the federal land. It is deliberately avoiding it.” — Daniel Palkin, Volts

Palkin was arguing that NEPA review falls hardest on clean energy. He went on to cite a survey of veteran developers in which 82% said they had avoided federal land because of NEPA or other federal approvals.

Transcript

Volts Around 1:09:24 into the episode
Speaker 2

Can we dive into that for a second, though, before we go to

Speaker 1

okay, briefly? We're so far behind schedule.

Speaker 2

Yes, I mean, if you want, we can go to the next one. No, no, go ahead. If you look at federal lands, which is not the only place that NEPA attaches, but the place that it certainly attaches disproportionately and kind of, you know, often requires the most fulsome and robust analysis. On federal lands in the U.S., federal lands make up 21% of the lower 48. They account for 3 or 4% respectively of each of our wind, solar, and geothermal. If you look at a map of federal lands across the country overlaid with utility-scale wind and solar development, you can see the wind and solar development filling in in the negative of all the federal land. It is deliberately avoiding it. There have been polls of developers, veteran developers who've developed 10 to 200 solar and transmission projects. And they ask them, you know, what is the most challenging kind of permitting, federal, local, or state? And they say federal by overwhelming majorities. They've asked them, have you ever avoided federal lands as a result of anticipating, you know, NEPA or other approvals? 82% yes…

Speaker 1

Okay, there's probably lots more to say about NEPA, but for the love of God, we really got to keep moving. Let's talk about state water permits. This, I think, is one where the trade-off is most lopsided from the perspective of environmental groups. So the second versus EPA case in 2023 shrank the…

Speaker 2

I think you are correct that this is the title of the bill that is. Most asymmetrically geared towards

Speaker 1

conservatives have been after this for years. Yeah. They've been pursuing this for years.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

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