Greetings from sunny Ireland!  I am excited to be writing this from the beautiful village of Drumshanbo on the shores of Lake Allen, 1.5 hours drive west of Dublin near the border with Northern Ireland.  I was invited to speak at the inaugeral Robert John Kane Energy Symposium, Ireland's first conference focused on sustainable development of renewable energy, and am looking forward to the discussions almost as much as I did coming to this amazing country in the first place. Read more

El Dorado solar trough. Photo by Geri Kodey, Courtesy NREL.

What’s going on with public lands and solar energy? From reading the newspaper, you’d think it was all project-by-project decisions, but a far bigger story is brewing, one with huge implications for the future of both solar energy and our public lands. Read more

El Dorado solar trough. Photo by Geri Kodey, Courtesy NREL.

It’s great that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has been focusing a lot of attention on solar and wind development on public lands, even to the point that the DOI’s web site is sporting images of wind turbines and solar panels. This attention to renewable energy is very welcome to those of us who work closely with government agencies to protect wild places from the impacts of drilling and climate change, but there are a couple critical pieces of the renewable energy puzzle that we need to make sure the Interior Department and its Bureau of Land Management focus on. Read more