Utilizing the Energy Resource Potential of DOE Lands

Nuclear Power Industry

Date posted: 10/16/17

The report by the Committee on Energy Resource Potential for DOE Lands; Board on Energy and Environmental Systems; Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences; National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine makes the claims that the Department of Energy (DOE)-managed lands continue to be a valuable asset among the nations’ property holdings. The potential for energy projects has attracted the interest of the private sector, and DOE sites can now boast of projects that have generated electric power using wind turbines and solar panels. Thus DOE-managed lands present an opportunity that can result in leasing revenues or production interests payable to DOE by developers to offset the cost of maintaining such properties. Existing, idle DOE-managed lands could become income generators, transitioning such lands, currently carried as liabilities, into assets. Yet while other governmental agencies, such as the Department of the Interior, have used their own Secretary’s office to facilitate the marketing of opportunities to promote renewable resource development by examining program opportunities on public lands, DOE, by contrast, appears to have done much less. In this report, the committees provide their findings on the NREL and CSM study. These are intended constructively to help interpret the NREL and CSM study and its ability to address the important question of what potential the DOE-managed lands have for additional energy projects. The committee believes that developing energy projects on DOE-managed lands is a critical enterprise that can provide return on investment. It should be noted that over the past few years the EIA has shamelessly and unnecessarily promoted solar and wind energy projects at the expense and reputation of nuclear power. To this end, and the current administration is supporting nuclear power, but also coal, it is interesting to observe how the expert committees assembled by the administration are trying to spin through the realities of energy selection and encouragement by federal agencies. Uranium resources are discussed on pages 21 and 26. Scan on ...