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Beatty Energy Center Project Withdrawn
Beatty Energy Center Project Withdrawn
August 23, 2025 - Beatty, NV - On August 22, 2025, we obtained an email from the Tonopah Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) explaining that NextEra has withdrawn their Beatty Energy Center solar project and that the BLM is in the process of closing out the casefile.
The proposed 800-megawatt photovoltaic solar facility would have been right next to Death Valley National Park's northeast entrance, and would have surround the Titus Canyon Road--a popular outback tour route through deep marble canyons in the Grapevine Mountains. Even worse, the industrial power plant would have marred the view from the historic ghost town of Rhyolite, a gold mining boom town active around 1900.
The company in its letter to BLM cited Beatty community stakeholders opposition to the project due to its proximity to Rhyolite and the surrounding viweshed, as well as to recreational and tourism concerns.
Unfortunately NextEra asked BLM to instead prioritize its Sawtooth solar project instead, a gigantic solar proposal in high-value public lands just to the north in Sarcobatus Flat. This area has extensice cultural and archaeological resources, wildflower displays, a pronghorn antelope calving area, the very rare plant Sodaville milkvetch, and recreational lands north of Beatty.
The view from the ghost town of Rhyolite, looking westwards towards Death Valley National Park. The Beatty Energy Center would have occuppied a huge area of the flatlands of Amargosa Valley below.
Read the withdrawal letter here:
Beatty Solar Energy Withdrawl.pdf
Interpretive park sign for Titus Canyon, Death Valley National Park. Tourists do not come to this desert to be surrounded by solar panels.
Goldwell Open Air Museum also overlooks the flat creosote desert of the upper Amargosa Valley where the Beatty Energy Center was proposed. People visit the area to gain a feeling of solitude and beautiful vast views, not industrial solar facilities.
Lonely desert roads, entrance route to Death Valley National Park. See more at our archive page: https://www.basinandrangewatch.org/Beatty-Solar.html
The 1906 Porter building at Rhyolite.
Map showing the proposed Beatty Energy Center (BEC), which was just withdrawn. The SB Solar (SB-S) and Rigel (R-S) solar project applications are still active.
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