Corporate energy and mining attorney specializing in the transactional and regulatory landscape of the energy transition
To help fuel domestic #mining and #mineralprocessing for the #energytransition, it would be great to see action on the Interagency Working Group's recommendation to develop something like the Western Solar Plan for mining on federal lands. Working with various stakeholders, BLM and USFS should put together a plan identifying "priority areas" where proposed projects would be subject to a streamlined #permitting process because there is high development potential with minimal conflicts with #localcommunities, #wildlife, and #plants. Proactive conflict identification and mitigation can help us ramp up production to meet the demands of the #energytransition while not sacrificing #tribal and local #communityengagement and #biodiversityconservation. Great background and additional recommendations contained in the report: https://lnkd.in/eYbMBfq2 "Conflicts over mining and ancillary uses are more likely to arise when mineral-rich areas also contain other highly valuable resources. The IWG believes that much more can be done to identify, avoid, minimize, and mitigate environmental impacts and development conflicts by better integrating land management planning and mineral exploration and development efforts. The IWG encourages the BLM and USFS to identify areas possessing high critical mineral resource development potential and where mineral development is less likely to result in unacceptable impacts to known competing resources. This effort can be modeled after programmatic planning efforts identifying priority areas for wind and solar development, provided additional data is collected in the location of potential mineral resources."