Biden Administration to Cut Costs for Wind and Solar Energy Projects
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration said on Wednesday it would cut in half the amount it charges companies to build wind and solar projects on federal lands, a move designed to encourage development of renewable energy.
“Clean energy projects on public lands have an important role to play in reducing our nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and lowering costs for families,” Deb Haaland, the interior secretary, said in a statement.
Wind and solar developers have long said that lease rates and fees for projects on federal lands were too high to attract investors. The new policy would cut those costs by about 50 percent, administration officials said.
Representative Mike Levin, Democrat of California, who has sponsored legislation to expedite renewable energy development, applauded the move. “As Americans continue to face worsening effects of the climate crisis and rising energy bills, it’s paramount that we strengthen our clean energy independence to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and lower energy costs,” he said in a statement.
Related Knowledge Center: ENERGY BASICS: renewables
Renewable energy sources — once the fuel of the future, then practical in specific, narrow applications — are increasingly economic mainstream sources of power generation. Hydropower was long the mainstay of U.S. renewable electricity generation, although wind power surpassed hydro for the first time in 2019, and solar continues its rapid growth. The continued growth of wind and solar, with their fluctuations, is tied in part to improvements in storage technology: batteries.