Just north of the Colorado-New Mexico border, in the sunny expanses of my native San Luis Valley, America's clean energy future is taking root.
Under President Obama's leadership, four tracts of land in southern Colorado and two dozen tracts across six Western states may soon be supplying American homes with clean, renewable electricity from the first large-scale solar power projects on our nation's public lands.
The 24 Solar Energy Study Areas that Interior is evaluating for environmentally appropriate solar energy development could generate nearly 100,000 megawatts of solar electricity, enough to power more than 29 million American homes.
The West's vast solar energy potential — along with wind, geothermal, and other renewables — can power our economy with affordable energy, create thousands of new jobs, and reduce the carbon emissions that are warming our planet.
As President Obama has said, we can remain the world's largest importer of oil or we can become the world's largest exporter of clean energy. The choice is clear, and the economic opportunities too great to miss. Will we rise to the challenge?
It is time that Washington step up to the plate, just as states like Colorado and local governments are already doing. Congress must pass strong and effective legislation that will steer our nation toward a clean energy economy that creates new jobs and improves our energy security.
We will not fully unleash the potential of the clean energy economy unless Congress puts an upper limit on the emissions of heat-trapping gases that are damaging our environment. Doing so will level the playing field for new technologies by allowing the market to put a price on carbon, and will trigger massive investment in renewable energy projects across the country.
We are also seeing the dangerous consequences of climate change: longer and hotter fire seasons, reduced snow packs, rising sea levels and declines of wildlife. Farmers, ranchers, municipalities, and other water users in Colorado and across the West are facing the possibility of a grim future in which there is less water to go around.
But with comprehensive clean energy legislation from Congress, sound policies and wise management of our nation's lands and oceans, we can change the equation.
That is why I am changing how the federal government does business on the 20 percent of the nation's land mass and 1.75 billion acres of the Outer Continental Shelf that we oversee. We are now managing these lands not just for balanced oil, natural gas, and coal development, but also — for the first time ever — to allow environmentally responsible renewable energy projects that can help power President Obama's vision for our clean energy future.
American business is responding to these new opportunities. Companies are investing in wind farms off the Atlantic seacoast, solar facilities in the Southwest, and geothermal energy projects throughout the West.
We need comprehensive legislation that will create new jobs, promote investment in a new generation of energy technology, break our dependence on foreign oil, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Let us rise to the energy challenges of our time.
Ken Salazar is the U.S. secretary of the Interior and a former U.S. senator from Colorado.