When Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar approved two large-scale solar energy plants to be located on public lands in California last week, he made history.

“It’s big news to see solar energy projects approved for Federal lands,” said Solar Energy Industries Association spokeswoman Monique Hanis. “It’s big news because we’ve never had any before.”

Solar energy technology has been around for decades. It was a viable enough power source in 1973 for president Jimmy Carter to install solar hot water panels on the White House roof. Carter levied the most aggressive campaign for solar seen to date, offering tax incentives and rebates for individuals and businesses. But even then, public lands were not available for solar development.

In the last 20 years, the government has signed more than 74,000 agreements with natural gas and oil companies to mine public lands at lease rates as low at $1 an acre.

The Federal Bureau of Land Management opens parcels of land to mineral development and then allows companies to bid for leases on that land. The highest bidder wins the lease and pays a flat fee until the wells it has dug begin producing. Then the companies pay 12.5 percent in royalties to the government.

It’s a tried and true system.

But it took some time for the government to develop an appropriate leasing system for renewable energy on public lands. Lease rates are based on market values for the land the solar farms occupy.

When President Barrack Obama announced that he wanted to open public lands to renewable energy development two years ago, there was a flood of applications, and the BLM and California administrators were not able to handle the load.

They’ve since created a fast track process for well-developed projects. A change that people in the industry like Hanis say needed to happen.

“This is an important step to begin to shift our energy generation,” Hanis said. “Solar is still less than 1 percent of our energy production in this country. There’s huge potential in this.”

The two projects approved earlier this week will produce 754 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 226,000 to 566,000 typical American homes, according to a press release from the BLM.

The Imperial Valley Solar project, pitched by Tessera Solar, will use Stirling Energy System’s SunCatcher tracking technology to generate 709 megawatts with 28,360 solar dishes on 6,360 acres.

Chevron Energy Solutions will use 40,500 photovoltaic solar panels on 422 acres in San Bernardino County to produce 45 megawatts of power.

"There are 11 million acres of public lands in the California Desert, and a large majority of those lands are managed for conservation purposes,” said Salazar, quoted in the press release. “These projects, while a significant commitment of public land, actually represent less than one-hundredth of one percent of that total area. Given the many benefits, the extensive mitigation measures, and the fair market value economic return, approval of these projects is clearly in the public interest."

Pictured: These Suncatcher dishes in Arizona are similar to the dishes being built at the Imperial Valley site. Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Energy.