Climate News: Sun Bear Solar Farm
By Forest Olson
This month I thought I would write about something more local than my last article so, I decided to write about the proposed Sun Bear solar farm on the Ute Mountain Ute reservation, near Towaoc, CO and how tribes may benefit from projects like this. Climate justice demands that any level of involvement that tribes choose to have in the production of renewable energy must be on the terms of the native communities and benefit them directly in the ways that they design and envision.
The proposed solar farm would be 1 mile by 8 miles long, with 2.2 million solar panels. The renewable energy company Canigou Group partnered with tribal officials to plan the Sun Bear solar farm, which officials say will provide over 500 local jobs for electricians and laborers. Officials plan to break ground in late 2024, and start producing energy by 2026.
Once completed, the Sun Bear solar farm will produce an estimated 756 megawatts (MW) of power annually. To put this in perspective a typical coal plant is 600 MW large, and 1 MW is enough energy to power roughly 750 homes at once. The project, costing 1 billion dollars, will provide electricity to the Western Area Power Administration. The Canigou Group is not certain all the energy will be able to be consumed within Colorado.
In the past, Indigenous groups have been taken advantage of and marginalized by the U.S government and the energy industry. Now that the federal government is supporting the rapid expansion of renewable energy, it gives indigenous groups a chance to be part of this industry. This will mean that more indigenous groups will have power, both electric and decision-making. Currently, 17,000 tribal homes in the United States have no power including 1 in 5 homes on the Navajo Reservation and roughly 1 in 3 homes on the Hopi Reservation. If tribes choose to be part of the renewable energy transition they must have decision making power through the whole process and benefit directly from building infrastructure on their land.
