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How the Renewable Energy Boom Is Remaking the American West

This article was produced in partnership with Inside Climate News, with support from the Puffin Foundation. ON HIGHWAY 50, Nev.—Local conservationist Patrick Donnelly drove east along the Loneliest Road in America, a ribbon of pavement in north central Nevada that deserves its name.

“We will continue to meet with states, Tribes, industry representatives, nonprofit and non-governmental organizations and any other interested parties regarding this work and our efforts to support a responsible clean energy future as part of a balance of the multiple use mandate on America’s public lands,” the Interior Department said. After driving up treacherous washed-out roads near the California border, Donnelly stopped for the night in Fish Lake Valley—a place of wildflowers, salt flats and a few farms, where desert travelers camp out under the stars and rise early to soak in hot springs. Lance Brown, the district ranger for the Humboldt-Toiyabe National Forest, said in a statement that “the initial proposal NV Energy submitted did not meet the screening criteria,” but that alternative routes developed since then would “avoid, minimize, and/or mitigate effects to greater sage-grouse habitat.”

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