The proposed transmission line will transfer wind-produced power from New Mexico to cities in Arizona and California.
According to an Associated Press story in U.S. News and World Report, the Interior Department has approved a major new power transmission line that will move wind-generated power from New Mexico to western cities.
The SunZia project is part of a broader federal effort to modernize the power grid and boost renewable energy production. The project would include 520 miles of transmission lines to California and Arizona.
The article adds that the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has a queue of more than 150 applications for wind and solar projects, largely on remote western lands. Critics of massive solar farms worry that installations will damage fragile desert ecosystems, often viewed as barren, and threaten the desert’s role as a carbon sink, recommending instead more solar panels near existing roadways and on parking lots.
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