The Trump administration has killed tax credits for renewable energy, fought to end wind farms, and called solar panels "ugly."
So, it's notable that the small Ute Mountain Ute tribe in Colorado has managed to keep one big solar project on track.
Over the next year and half, solar panels capable of generating 270 megawatts worth of electricity, and 180 megawatts of battery storage will be built on tribal land in neighboring New Mexico. (The average American home uses a little less than one kilowatt per month, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration).
"I want to thank everybody that has had their hands tied to this project," Alston Turtle, a member of the Ute Mountain Ute tribal council told about 100 people at a recent groundbreaking ceremony for it.
"We're going through some challenging times right now, especially with the solar projects," Turtle said. "But we've got to continue to move forward in the vision that we see is right. As Native Americans we try to be the best stewards of the land, and take care of this land that was given to us."
A once and future energy crossroads
Although its arid reservation edges into Utah and New Mexico, most of the tribe's 933 square miles sits in the southwest corner of Colorado. It's a landscape of arroyos and sandstone cliffs, and at the center, the sacred mountain known as Sleeping Ute Warrior, which sustains juniper forests, and until recently, an abundance of flowing springs.
"Just in the thirty years I've worked here, I've seen so many of those springs dry up," said Scott Clow, head of the tribe's Environment Department, adding that many here are concerned that climate change threatens ceremonies and traditional gathering practices.
"They're going to have Sun Dance up there next month," Clow said, referring to an important tribal ceremony and gesturing toward Sleeping Ute Warrior. "And the spring next to the Sun Dance grounds is dry. It's bone dry."
For 75 years, the tribe has had oil and gas development on its land. At one time, Clow estimated, oil and gas revenue may have accounted for more than half the tribe's annual budget. But in recent decades, that has declined.
"Oil and gas is very boom-bust," he said. "And this tribe has ridden that roller coaster including the scary crash."
15 years ago, the tribe started mapping out possible sites for utility-scale solar projects. At the time, the US was trying to phase out fossil fuels, decrease carbon emissions, and invest in a renewable energy transition, which meant federal grants and resources were available for tribes.
"They were so passionate about going forward because they had already decided to go big with renewable energy," said Sandra Begay.
Begay is Navajo, and a retired mechanical engineer from Sandia National Laboratories, who spent decades working with dozens of tribal communities across the country on solar development.
"We would go to a tribe who wanted this assistance, and we facilitated a three-day dialogue," she said.
In 2015, with support from the US Department of Energy, Begay led a workshop with the Ute Mountain Ute tribe. She encouraged the tribe to think about energy development as a long game.
"Time is different on the reservations. Time with tribes is different," she said. "It's the amount of effort and time it takes to do a project. Because you're dealing with tribal elections, politics, the emphasis of money or no money…and that's a part of the process you have to get people to understand: can you think ten years in the future?"
The strategic energy plan produced out of those meetings helped keep the tribe focused on its solar energy goals. They started small with residential rooftop solar. Then came a one-megawatt array that helped power the tribal casino out on the highway.
"Once we put the one-megawatt plant online, we had a lot more developers coming to us after that," recalled Clow.
By 2023, the tribe was homing in on a utility-scale solar development, on its lands in New Mexico. A project known as Foxtail Flats. The demolition of a nearby coal fired power plant left behind a network of transmission lines and electricity customers.
What might seem like a remote patch of desert is actually prime solar real estate, sitting at a major energy crossroads.
"There's transmission to El Paso, Texas, throughout New Mexico, Utah markets, Colorado markets…Arizona, California…and the tribe has land right there," Clow said.
But then last year, the Trump Administration's Big Beautiful Bill killed tax credits for renewable projects across the US, and the president was openly criticizing solar technology at an August cabinet meeting.
Meanwhile, US Interior Secretary Doug Burgum issued a memo directing all federal permitting for wind and solar projects to be routed directly through his office.
"This memo from the secretary's office created 68 new layers of red tape that amount to a moratorium on Solar Energy permitting," said Sean Gallagher, a policy analyst for the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Gallagher said nearly all new renewable projects across the US are at a standstill.
"Thirty-six Percent of all electricity capacity that's planned to come online through 2030, is at risk of not coming online because of the administration's actions," he said.
But the solar and battery storage project on Ute Mountain Ute land squeaked through. In the final days before US policy changed last summer, project partners got the federal ink they needed on their permits, which is why they were holding shovels and smiling for the cameras at the recent groundbreaking ceremony.
"We've been really nervous about this project, with a lot of the changing federal policies," said Matt Heavner, who sits on the Board of Public Utilities from Los Alamos County, New Mexico, under contract to purchase more than half the project's power.
"The biggest fear was the financing collapsing to get this project going," Heavner said. "(We worried about) federal subsidies going away, and the financing that's required for this project not making the cut with investors. That's why it's so exciting to be out here today."
Other new projects may not be so lucky, at least in the next few years. But Sandra Begay, the Navajo engineer and renewables expert, tells tribal communities to think about the current political climate as a kind of wintertime–not a season for building, but a season for research and planning.
"Their land is not going away. Their authority to use that land is not going away. You just wait until the time is right when those customers really want new electrons," Begay said.
With demand up and energy prices up too, it would seem customers want the Ute tribe's new electrons now. One of the other customers for the new solar energy that will be generated on Ute Mountain Ute land: a new data center being built by Meta, near Albuquerque, New Mexico.
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