The California desert covers more ground than some countries. In September 2016 C.E., the federal government approved a landmark plan to manage 10.8 million acres of it — designating priority zones for solar, wind, and geothermal development while locking in millions of acres for conservation, wildlife, and recreation.
Key findings
- Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan: Phase I of the DRECP covers 10.8 million acres of Bureau of Land Management public lands in California’s desert region, providing a blueprint for both renewable energy and ecosystem protection.
- Clean energy potential: The Development Focus Areas identified in the plan could generate up to 27,000 megawatts of renewable energy — enough to power more than eight million homes.
- Conservation zones: The plan designates National Conservation Lands, Areas of Critical Environmental Concern, and wildlife allocations that are closed to energy development and managed for long-term ecological resilience.
Eight years in the making
The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan didn’t happen overnight. Federal and state agencies, tribal governments, counties, and public stakeholders spent eight years building it — a process that included the Bureau of Land Management, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the California Energy Commission, and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
That kind of multi-agency, multi-government collaboration is rare. The result is a plan that tries to answer one of the hardest questions in the clean energy transition: where should large-scale energy infrastructure go, and what should it leave alone?
The answer, here, is highly specific. Development Focus Areas were chosen for their solar, wind, and geothermal potential, their proximity to transmission lines, and their relatively low ecological conflict. Projects in those zones benefit from streamlined permitting and predictable environmental survey requirements.
What the plan actually protects
The conservation side of the DRECP is substantial. Designated National Conservation Lands and Areas of Critical Environmental Concern are permanently closed to energy development. Wildlife allocation zones and National Scenic and Historic Trail corridors add further layers of protection.
The California desert is home to species found nowhere else on Earth — desert tortoises, bighorn sheep, and rare plant communities adapted to extreme heat and aridity. The plan’s adaptive management provisions are designed to help those ecosystems respond to climate change over time, not just to survive current conditions.
Special Recreation Management Areas are also identified throughout the plan, recognizing that public lands serve hikers, off-road users, and local communities — not only energy developers.
A model for the clean energy transition
The DRECP is part of a broader Obama-era push to accelerate renewable energy development on public lands. By 2016 C.E., the administration had approved dozens of utility-scale solar and wind projects across the American West. The DRECP tried to get ahead of that wave — planning for development rather than reacting to it project by project.
California Energy Commissioner Karen Douglas called it “a clear pathway for projects on public lands,” giving the state greater certainty about where large-scale energy could be sited. That kind of advance planning reduces conflict between developers, conservationists, and local communities — a model other states and countries are watching closely.
The broader DRECP effort covers 22 million acres of public and private land across seven California counties, including Imperial, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego. Phase II, led by the California Energy Commission, was still underway at the time of this announcement, focused on the non-federal land component.
Lasting impact
The DRECP set a precedent for landscape-level energy planning in the United States. Rather than evaluating renewable energy projects one at a time — with full environmental review for each — the plan pre-identified the right places, reducing permitting timelines and legal uncertainty for developers while giving conservation groups durable protections they could rely on.
For California, which has some of the most ambitious renewable energy mandates in the world, the plan provided the land-use clarity needed to actually meet those targets. The 27,000-megawatt potential of the designated development zones represents a significant contribution to the state’s decarbonization goals.
The model also carried a broader message: that clean energy and conservation don’t have to be adversaries. Good planning can deliver both — if governments are willing to do the hard work upfront.
Blindspots and limits
Phase I of the DRECP covered only BLM-managed land, leaving the larger private-land component of the plan — Phase II — unresolved at the time of this announcement. The plan also drew criticism from some tribal nations and local communities who felt their concerns about cultural heritage sites and traditional land uses were not fully incorporated into the eight-year process. Landscape-level planning at this scale inevitably involves tradeoffs, and not every stakeholder walked away satisfied.
Read more
For more on this story, see: U.S. Department of the Interior
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Renewables now make up at least 49% of global power capacity
- Indigenous land rights: 160 million hectares recognized at COP30
- The Good News for Humankind archive on renewable energy
About this article
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