President Obama has nominated Nevadan Neil Kornze to lead the Bureau of Land Management. Kornze has championed the administration’s plans to lease public lands for solar-energy projects.
Previously he worked for eight years as an aide to Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev).
Kornze’s boss, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, had this to say about him: “Neil has helped implement forward-looking reforms at the BLM to promote energy development in areas of minimal conflict, drive landscape-level planning efforts, and dramatically expand the agency’s use of technology to speed up the process for energy permitting.
Kornze played a key role in developing the Western Solar Plan, which established 17 low-conflict zones for commercial solar energy development and also identified lands appropriate for conservation, and the agency’s approval of 47 solar, wind and geothermal utility-scale projects on public lands, as a leader of the Department’s Renewable Energy Strike Team. When built, these projects [will] add up to more than 13,300 megawatts — enough electricity to power 4.6 million homes and support 19,000 construction and operations jobs. He also has been a leader in reforming BLM’s oil and gas program, including the upcoming launch of a nation-wide online permitting system that could significantly reduce drilling permit processing times, and in the bureau’s efforts to enhance and increase visitors to the diverse system of national conservation lands.