Lombardo silent on Trump’s pledge to restore Biden-era solar subsidies to Nevada

“I walked him through it, and he goes, ‘Okay, sounds good. I’m glad you brought it up. I’ll call Burgum and tell him it’s allowable in Nevada.’” the governor recalled of his meeting with Trump in December. (Lombardo photo by Jeniffer Solis/Nevada Current; Trump photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

President Donald Trump’s agreement with Gov. Joe Lombardo to restore subsidies to develop solar farms in Nevada, revealed during a December podcast, is among the best-kept secrets in an industry devastated by Trump’s anti-clean energy agenda.

Trump’s policies have frozen 60 solar projects, many of them in Nevada, the Center for Western Priorities reported this month. The clean-energy projects were slated to benefit from subsidies championed by former President Joe Biden, whose policies Trump and Lombardo have slammed.  

Hosts of the GangboX podcast, produced by the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union, asked Lombardo in December what he’s “doing about energy projects getting shut down here?”

Lombardo responded he’d had “some movement in that space in the last two weeks” following an “audience with Donald Trump” while in Washington, D.C. in November.  

“We’re talking about people he knows in Nevada, and he’s asking how they’re doing,” Lombardo recalled of his meeting with Trump. “And then I said, ‘Well, I got a couple items I need to address, reference Nevada. One in particular was your executive order on the prohibition of solar energy.’”

The permitting process for solar projects on federal lands in Nevada has been stalled since Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill eliminated tax credits for solar and wind projects enacted by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. 

A subsequent executive order from Trump eliminated all subsidies for wind and solar projects, and a subsequent order issued by Interior Secretary Doug Burgum in August requires that Burgum personally review all applications for approval, bringing the permitting process to a crawl. 

Lombardo wrote to Burgum at the time, complaining the stalled projects would compromise the development of energy to power the growing “demands of the mining industry and data centers.” 

“I explained to him why we have to have a different mindset in the state of Nevada, and subsequently, I had an audience with Donald Trump,” the governor said on the podcast. 

“It becomes very cumbersome to have that executive order out of the Trump administration in the state of Nevada,” Lombardo told the hosts, citing the state’s renewable portfolio standard. “I don’t know the exact date – 2030 to 2035 – we had to have 35% solar power, right? Well, we’re at 20% currently, right?” 

Nevada’s Renewable Portfolio Standard requires that half of the energy sold by 2030 must be from renewable sources. Last year, NV Energy reported that 47% of energy sold in 2024 was from renewables. 

“Nevada utilizes solar energy more than any other state in the union,” Lombardo told the hosts, adding that he explained to Trump the potential for generating solar power on what the governor called Nevada’s “brownfields, in other words, fields that aren’t going to be developed.”

“I walked him through it, and he goes, ‘Okay, sounds good. I’m glad you brought it up. I’ll call Burgum and tell him it’s allowable in Nevada.’” the governor recalled of his meeting with Trump. “That’s as simple as it was. Has it happened yet? Well, it was two weeks ago.”

Lombardo went on to say he had a meeting scheduled with Burgum the next week on Colorado River issues, and planned to “confirm with him at that time where we’re at with the solar fields.”

Nevada, Lombardo added, has four solar projects that were under construction and are now stalled by the administration’s edicts. “The original ask was to let those at least continue and be finished, and then actually pull back on the executive order for the state of Nevada.”

“When it comes to renewable energy, Nevada relies on solar more than any other state,” Lombardo wrote on X in December. “That’s why I spoke directly with President Trump about potential federal policies that could impact our solar industry. Since then, we’ve worked with his Administration to make sure Nevada’s renewable energy supply is protected and stays strong.” 

Lombardo made no further statements about the agreement with Trump or how the administration is protecting Nevada’s renewable energy supply. He did not respond to the Current’s requests for comment. 

The White House, the Dept. of Interior, and Nevada’s U.S. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, also did not respond. 

“Such an agreement wasn’t on our radar,” said Adam Weiner, a spokesman for Advanced Energy United, a clean energy trade organization in Washington, D.C. “Not aware of such an agreement in any other state either.”

Nevada’s annual gross domestic product is projected to “shrink by $1 billion in 2030 and $1.5 billion in 2035” as a result of Trump’s energy policies, according to a state-by-state analysis from Energy Innovation, a nonpartisan think tank.

Should Trump follow through on his agreement with Lombardo, the renewable energy boom fostered by Biden’s spending initiatives could reignite stalled projects and boost the state’s economy. 

In October, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected an effort by NV Energy to let solar applicants out of their contracts without penalty.The utility did not respond to requests for comment on Lombardo’s agreement with Trump. 

Late last year the Bureau of Land Management announced approval of amendments to the Libra solar project in Yerington. The Dept. of Interior and the BLM did not respond to inquiries about whether the approval was in the normal course of business or is related to Trump’s agreement with Lombardo.

In October, the BLM scrapped the Esmeralda Seven project in Southern Nevada, the largest solar project in the nation, with the capacity to power nearly 2 million homes. 

Sixteen states with Democratic attorneys general, including Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, are suing the administration over its first-day assertion that the U.S. is facing an energy emergency that requires enhanced development of reliable sources of power such as oil, gas, and coal. The emergency, the suit claims, does not exist. 

Ford is running in Nevada’s Democratic primary race for governor.