Anyone who has spent any amount of time on the Western Slope knows we have an abundance of beautiful scenery, kind people, and a LOT of sunshine, and while the plentiful sunlight has historically powered our agriculture and a world-class outdoor recreation industry, it will soon also be powering more of our homes due to three new utility-scale solar projects that have gained approval in three different counties in just the last few months. Each of these projects are in line with the work Western Colorado Alliance has participated in to gain more local energy production and control, and move us towards the climate action targets set by the Governor and state legislature.

Grand Junction and the Mesa County Commissioners unanimously approved in August the Nannie Blaine Solar Array, named after Grand Junction’s first school teacher who taught in the 1880s. (There is a dispute over whether the ‘e’ in Blaine should be there or not, but for our purposes I will leave it in.) Solar Array, named after Grand Junction’s first school teacher who taught in the 1880’s. This project, managed by SolarGen, is located just north of I-70 near the airport and just east of the Grand Junction Motor Speedway. When completed, the solar array will cover 151 acres of desert land that is currently not in use and will remedy a perennial problem of illegal dumping and trespassing that is commonplace in the area today, while supplying 48 megawatts of power, or enough for about 7,500 homes.

Located in Delta County to the northeast of the city of Delta, the Garnet Mesa Solar Array gained unanimous approval by the County Commissioners in August after a small fight over the land use code going back to March of this year. In March, the County Commissioners voted 2-1 to deny the conditional permit for the solar array due to a debate about the use of the land for energy production rather than the county’s historical agricultural background and culture. Commissioners reversed course in August however after backlash from the community over the denial and the applicants for the project, Guzman Energy, Citra Power, and the Delta Montrose Electrical Association (DMEA), proposed a first-in-the-West-Slope idea of pursuing agrivoltaics, or the mixing of agriculture/farming with energy production by irrigating underneath the solar panels and grazing 1,000 sheep on the land. Once this project is completed, it will cover two separate lots of land on Garnet Mesa and supply over 194,000 megawatt hours of electricity each year powering 18,000 homes in the DMEA service area, as well as significant jobs, tax revenue, and reaches DMEA’s goal of 20% local energy production.

To be located just south of Parachute in Garfield County, the Garfield County Commissioners have approved the 90 -acre solar array and power storage facility that will be built by AES High Mesa Solar and provide power to the Holy Cross Energy service territory. While significantly smaller than the previous two solar arrays, providing just 32,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year supplying about 4,400 homes (about 2.5% of the total energy need of Holy Cross Energy), this project still gets Holy Cross one step closer to achieving their goal of 100% renewable energy production by 2030.

It is our view that this is just the beginning; the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is about to unleash a massive investment in solar power as well as many other forms of clean and renewable energy production and storage — and these are just three solar infrastructure projects among many more to come as our sunbathed- western Colorado makes the transition from a small part of a globally controlled gas and oil economy to clean and renewable energy that is locally produced and managed.