The Biden administration is facing critical questions about how to balance the urgency of transitioning to clean energy with other progressive priorities. On Monday, a U.S. district judge halted construction of two geothermal power plants on public land in Nevada. The decision was in response to a lawsuit filed in December by the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental nonprofit, and the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe, against the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM, for approving the project.

Geothermal power plants pump hot water from deep underground and use it to generate steam to produce clean electricity. The Nevada plants are set to be built on a verdant wetland in the desert called Dixie Meadows. The suit alleges that the project threatens to dry up the hot springs that support the wetland and are of religious and cultural significance to the Fallon Paiute-Shoshone. The ecosystem is also home to the Dixie Valley toad, a species that is not known to exist anywhere else on Earth.

“The United States has repeatedly promised to honor and protect indigenous sacred sites, but then the BLM approved a major construction project nearly on top of our most sacred hot springs,” said Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribal Chair Cathi Tuni in a statement. “It just feels like more empty words.” Tuni went on to say that the tribe has not opposed geothermal projects elsewhere in the Dixie Valley but that it had a duty to protect this site.

The conflict illustrates the challenges the Biden administration will face in pursuing the rapid energy transition that’s required to stabilize the climate, while also trying to repair relations with Tribal Nations, increase U.S. conservation, and protect biodiversity. Energy development has always involved trade-offs, but the stakes are higher today, with many in the climate movement asserting that the transition to renewables should not repeat historically exploitative practices.

Geothermal power plants currently produce a small fraction of U.S. electricity — only about 0.5 percent in 2020. But an analysis by the Department of Energy found that with improvements in technology, that number could go up to 8.5 percent by 2050. Geothermal power plants have several relative advantages, in addition to not directly producing any carbon emissions. They have a small physical footprint compared to wind and solar farms, and they can provide power 24/7. This kind of always-available, dispatchable source of electricity will be critical for grid reliability as intermittent sources of energy like wind and solar increase.

In its approval for the Dixie Meadows geothermal plants, the BLM wrote that they would help Nevada achieve its goal of getting 25 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. The agency also cited President Joe Biden’s January 2021 executive order spelling out his government-wide approach to tackling the climate crisis.

But the Center for Biological Diversity says the agency rushed the approval process and ignored the recommendations of government scientists. The lawsuit cites comments submitted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Nevada Department of Wildlife raising concerns about the project’s environmental impacts and the developer’s plan to monitor and address any degradation of the springs.

Read the full article about conflict in progressive priorities by Emily Pontecorvo at Grist.