US SOLAR ENERGY PLAN ADOPTED

After nearly three years in the making, our nation’s solar energy program reached a culminating milestone this week when Interior Secretary Ken Salazar adopted the final solar plan through a Record of Decision.

This last step greenlights the implementation of a plan to develop solar energy on many of the nation’s sunniest public lands, a significant achievement in advancing efforts to produce clean, renewable energy, and enable us to put solutions on the table to address the increasing extremities in weather patterns.

This summer we experienced a heat wave that swept across the country, setting record high temperatures and contributing to the worst drought in 50 years. Millions of people without power were forced to sweat it out without air conditioning due to violent weather that, according to an increasing number of scientists, is the result of climate change.

Many affected people have rightly asked, “What are we doing about it?”

Interior’s solar program offers solutions to address the climate challenge ahead of us in a sensible and economical way. Because climate change is primarily the result of burning fossil fuels, a plan to transform our energy system to rely on clean, renewable sources like the sun is critical.