Interior Secretary Ken Salazar made a desert splash yesterday with an announcement made in tandem with Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid. From “Secretary Salazar, Senator Reid Announce ‘Fast-Track’ Initiatives for Solar Energy Development on Western Lands“:

LAS VEGAS, Nevada – Under initiatives announced today by Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar and U.S. Senator Harry Reid (D-NV), federal agencies will work with western leaders to designate tracts of U.S. public lands in the West as prime zones for utility-scale solar energy development, fund environmental studies, open new solar energy permitting offices and speed reviews of industry proposals.

“President Obama’s comprehensive energy strategy calls for rapid development of renewable energy, especially on America’s public lands,” said Secretary Salazar.  “This environmentally-sensitive plan will identify appropriate Interior-managed lands that have excellent solar energy potential and limited conflicts with wildlife, other natural resources or land users.  The two dozen areas we are evaluating could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity.  With coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible solar energy production that will help build a clean-energy economy for the 21st century.”

Excellent idea. Let’s do it! And can we do the same for new nuclear power plants? After all, with coordinated environmental studies, good land-use planning and zoning and priority processing, we can accelerate responsible nuclear energy production that will help build a clean-energy economy for the 21st century.

(100,000 megawatts? That seems like a quite a goal. A nuclear power plant on average can produce about 1,000 megawatts. Should we really believe that solar technology, investment and transmission capacity can be ramped up so quickly as to produce the equivalent of 100 nuclear power plants?)

Iain Murray of the Competitive Enterprise Institute puts President Obama’s comments about coal cited below into broader context and asks the reasonable question, “Does Anyone Understand Energy Policy These Days?” Especially since purported supporters of alternative energy really aren’t:

Meanwhile, all those renewable-energy projects that we were promised from the stimulus look like never being built if the environmental movement (you know, the guys pushing for them) have their way. Senator Feinstein is blocking a solar project in the Mojave Desert because of damage to the local tortoise population. I’m going to shock everyone by quoting Gov. Schwarzenegger approvingly:

If we cannot put solar power plants in the Mojave desert, I don’t know where the hell we can put it.

Similar story with wind power in the west. Yet even if the environmental movement weren’t blocking everything, we couldn’t get where they want to be their way. Even Steven Chu recognizes that the technology will require Nobel-caliber breakthroughs. Yet they aren’t going to keep the lights on in the short term, when electricity becomes too expensive as Obama’s cap-and-trade or regulations hit.

Henry Payne, writing at Planet Gore, adds more weight to the ball of confusion, “The Coming Green Burden“:

What one hand giveth, the other taketh away. The federal stimulus bill will reportedly net the average American $13 a week. Today, Michigan’s two major utilities announced that federal green emissions mandates will in part necessitate an 11 percent electric rate hike this year — or approximately $10 a month to the average Michigander.

In a Los Angeles election Tuesday, voters appear to have narrowly rejected Measure B — a labor-backed measure to expand unionized government employment through mandated installation of solar power panels.

For more, see Ballotpedia.org.