In July, the Department of Interior quietly issued a directive requiring that every move made by a wind or solar project involving federal land — including at least 68 specific actions listed out in the memo, plus “any other similar or related decisions” — go through a multi-layered review and approval process ending with Secretary Doug Burgum himself.
The clean energy industry understood the memo to be a clear effort to block the buildout of a huge range of projects, including by causing such extended delays that projects couldn’t meet the window to be eligible for tax credits, which had been newly shortened by the GOP’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” According to data from the Bureau of Land Management, as of January there were at least 48 wind, solar, and generator tie line projects proposed on public land, totaling 25.4 gigawatts of power.
One potentially unintended consequence of the wide-reaching memo, however, is its impact on clean energy projects built on Tribal lands, which are sovereign lands held in trust for federally recognized Tribes, and are separate from federal public land managed by agencies like BLM. In the wake of the memo, federal employees at the Department of Indian Energy, which supports federally recognized Tribes in executing energy projects, told Latitude Media that they were concerned that it could mean wind and solar projects seeking funding from the office would also be stonewalled.
It’s a question that DOI has yet to answer, despite calls from Tribal clean energy advocates for the office to clarify its stance.
Dr. Crystal Miller, who leads policy and government relations for the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, said that from a Tribal perspective, the memo as written was a “re-institutionalization of paternalism over Tribal Nations.”
“This additional review layer makes it even harder for Tribes to meet timelines for federal grants, and projects on Tribal lands often already require right of ways, leases, and even cultural resource reviews, all of which are directly named in the memo,” Miller said.
In practice, the memo is creating a bottleneck for Tribal projects, most of which are relying heavily on federal tax credits, she added.
Meanwhile, Tribes are more impacted by the early phase-out of those credits under the OBBB than most, Miller said, because they already face higher permitting hurdles thanks to overlapping jurisdictions.
“This additional review layer makes it even harder for Tribes to meet timelines for federal grants and tax credits,” she said. “The result is Tribal clean energy projects will be delayed or blocked outright, clearing the way for fossil fuel projects that are not subject to equivalent secretarial-level oversight.”
Campaigning for clarity
Miller explained that Tribal Nations face significantly higher energy burdens than other communities; according to the Department of Energy, Tribal communities endure 6.5 times more outages than the national average.
For more reliable energy, solar projects, both community-scale and rooftop, are often the most accessible forms of energy for a Tribe to build, she added: “They directly reduce utility bills and even allow, in some instances, Tribal Nations to actually have electricity for the first time.”
The DOI memo is already having a dampening effect on Tribal activity at the federal funding level, Miller said. The Alliance has already heard from some Tribes that they’re discouraged from applying for funding opportunities.
For example, over the summer the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a solicitation for proposals for projects “that conduct resource inventories and assessments, feasibility studies, or other pre-development studies necessary to process, use, and develop energy and mineral resources.” The grant, called the Energy and Mineral Development Program, had $8.5 million to disburse to up to ten projects. But as far as Miller and the Alliance are aware, only one Tribe applied for funding to build clean energy.
In the weeks since the release of the memo, the Alliance’s goal has been to get “clarification” from DOI that Tribes are not included in the new review requirements. “We have been calling on Tribes to really reach out to their representatives, to have conversations with Secretary Burgum and his staff, and to request that…they clarify that Tribes are not being swept up in this,” Miller explained.
To date, there’s been very little movement on clarifying the memo. But Miller said the Alliance is still hopeful, partly because Burgum and his staff are taking meetings with Tribal-led coalitions on other topics.
Into the midst of this uncertainty, the Government Accountability Office earlier this month dropped a report recommending changes to federal procedures to reduce barriers for Tribes developing energy projects. The subject of the report is the DOE Tribal Energy Financing Program specifically, which was designed by the wider Loan Program’s office in collaboration with the Office of Indian Energy. But the challenges identified in the report, such as lack of access to capital and systemic barriers to accessing federal programs, mirror those that Miller has experienced in the Alliance’s work with DOI — ones that are already being worsened by the July memo.
New partners
The new approval process isn’t the only hurdle facing clean energy developments on Tribal land; Miller said that 100% of the Tribes that her organization works with rely on some form of federal funding to build clean energy projects.
That means the general uncertainty around disbursement of federal funding is taking a serious toll. Major sources of funding in recent years have included EPA’s now-cancelled Solar For All program, the Grid Deployment Office’s Tribal Transmission Infrastructure Planning Program (T-TIPP), and the Grid Resilience Formula Grant.
The latter is a cost match program established under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which offers $2.3 billion, spread over five years, to states and Tribes for grid resiliency projects. There are two years and about $1 billion left in that program, Miller explained, but today those funds are in limbo. In December, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, which operates the program, issued a notice of intent to open the next round of funding by February 2025. As of August, though, Miller said Tribes haven’t heard any updates, and it’s not clear what will happen with that funding source.
Ultimately, the Alliance’s biggest question is whether any federal funding at all will be available for clean energy on Tribal lands. If that funding comes with additional hoops to be jumped through, Tribes will work through those, Miller said. But if funding simply isn’t available from the federal government, Tribes will have to pivot.
“The conversation that we’re all having is, ‘where do we turn to next?’” she explained. “We were accustomed to seeing a lot of different grant opportunities coming down from the federal level… but now if it’s no longer on the table, it’s really about removing the blinders. Where weren’t we looking in the past?”
