Trump’s solar freeze is now so tough that at least one renewable energy developer has asked his administration to turn their permitting application into a data center and gas-fired power plant instead.
Renew Development HoldCo – an LLC created by Clearway Energy Group – wrote the Bureau of Land Management in April asking if they could amend their 2021 application to build the Amber solar project, a 500-megawatt solar project in the Nevada desert that would require building on federal land. Their requested change? “[T]o formally remove the proposed solar facility and replace it with the development of a proposed data center and natural gas facility,” according to a copy of the letter I obtained.
“This amendment is the result of a shift in our internal development priorities and an updated assessment of project timing, in order to better align with the goals of our Administration,” reads the letter, which is dated April 3 and signed by Clearway’s chief development officer John Woody. “The data center concept is in exploratory early stages and as such has a longer and more flexible development horizon, and we believe its schedule will better align with the Bureau’s current workload and staffing plans.”
Now, this swap is somewhat shocking but shouldn’t exactly be a surprise. Companies with federal energy leases are struggling to get their renewable projects permitted by a hostile Trump administration. We’ve already seen some offshore wind developers ditch their leases in favor of payouts and commitments to build more fossil infrastructure. Clearway Energy Group is owned by Global Infrastructure Partners and TotalEnergies, the latter of which struck such a deal in March.
But this does appear to represent an aberration for Clearway, one of the nation’s largest operators of renewable energy projects and whose marketing materials primarily focus on “clean energy.” Nearly all of the company’s portfolio is carbon-free power or energy storage generation sans a handful of “flexible generation” energy projects in California, according to an online map of their project pipeline. The company did not disclose in the documents I reviewed if the gas plant itself would power the data center, provide power to the wider grid, or both.
Candidly, I’ve been watching like a hawk to see if Trump’s chokehold on solar and wind permits would lead to more gas infrastructure and data centers on federal property instead. And companies are getting data center permits when they ask to swap out their solar farm for AI infrastructure. On Friday, I reported that a joint venture involving renewables developer Arevon and energy trader Bill Perkins got permission from BLM to switch an environmental permit tied to a solar farm for one allowing a new data center. Environmentalists plan to legally challenge BLM’s determination as they say it’s a test case for the future of federal land policy.
It’s unclear if Clearway would be the one to build and construct this hypothetical data center and power plant. I for one can’t find any evidence of Clearway developing data centers before. My best guess is that if they do move forward with this, it would look like the joint venture I covered on Friday, where Arevon distanced itself from the actual day-to-day operations of the development and a new firm specializing in data centers came in. But that’s just a hunch and there’s a saying about assumptions.
Nevertheless, Clearway is clearly handling the permitting side. Attached to the Clearway letter was an application also sent to BLM for constructing utility and telecommunications facilities on federal lands, a document technically known as an SF299. The application states Clearway considered using solar energy for the data center as well as using private land, but their alternative designs weren’t selected because they had “higher environmental and stakeholder conflicts.”
Also, in a section of the document requesting Clearway provide a “statement of need for the project,” the developer said it was submitting this proposal “in response to federal energy objectives” and specifically cited Trump’s Day 1 executive order which the company said “encourage[d] development of reliable energy projects on federal lands.”
I reached out to Clearway asking for more information on the letter and application. In response, the company claimed the solar project wasn’t being killed – it simply was moved to private land. They also declined to comment on the data center and gas project. Instead, I was provided a statement attributable to an unnamed spokesperson that “while we do not comment on any individual application while it moves through federal approval processes, we are pleased to be advancing more than 4 GW of solar and battery resources in Nevada on private and public lands and expect those projects to deliver tremendous economic benefits to the communities where they’re built.”
“Clearway values its strong working partnership with the BLM, its Southern Nevada office, and also with state and local interests in Nevada. Across all of these relationships, we continuously assess how best to develop and deliver infrastructure that meets needs and aligns with local and national policies and goals.”
French firefighters near Bordeaux on Sunday. ALAIN JOCARD / AFP via Getty Images
