To the south of the Monte Cristo mountain range and west of Paymaster Canyon, a vast stretch of the Nevada desert has attracted modern-day prospectors chasing one of 21st-century America’s greatest investment booms.
Solar power developers want to cover an area larger than Washington, DC, with silicon panels and batteries, converting sunlight into electricity that will power air conditioners in sweltering Las Vegas along with millions of other homes and businesses.
But earlier this month, bureaucrats in charge of federal lands scrapped collective approval for the Esmeralda 7 projects, in what campaigners fear is part of an attack on renewable energy under President Donald Trump. “We will not approve wind or farmer destroying [sic] Solar,” he posted on his Truth Social platform in August. Developers will need to reapply individually, slowing progress.
Thousands of miles away on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, it is a different story. China has laid solar panels across an area the size of Chicago high up on the Tibetan Plateau, where the thin air helps more sunlight get through.
The Talatan Solar Park is part of China’s push to double its solar and wind generation capacity over the coming decade. “Green and low-carbon transition is the trend of our time,” President Xi Jinping told delegates at a UN summit in New York last month.
China’s vast production of solar panels and batteries has also pushed down the prices of renewables hardware for everyone else, meaning it has “become very difficult to make any other choice in some places,” according to Heymi Bahar, senior analyst at the International Energy Agency.
In 2010, the IEA estimated that there would be 410 gigawatts (GW) of solar panels installed around the world by 2035. There is already more than four times that capacity, with about half of it in China.
Many countries in Africa and the Middle East, even in petrostates such as Saudi Arabia, are rapidly developing solar power. “It’s a very cheap way to harness the sun,” says Kingsmill Bond, an energy strategist at think-tank Ember.