Feinstein: Don't Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels

Q: Can’t we find some places in the desert for large-scale renewables that don’t require habitat destruction?

A: No doubt we can. Everyone agrees (or pays lip service) to the importance of “appropriate siting,” from environmental groups to Big Renewable lobbying groups like CEERT to regulatory agencies. Thousands of acres of low-value and abandoned agricultural lands are available in the desert, so it should be easy to find spots that don’t destroy habitat. Yet, so far, both environmental groups and state regulators have failed to ensure that these projects will be built in the most appropriate places first. Take, for example, BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar proposal, which is the project closest to approval in the California Desert. This project would destroy 4,000 acres of good desert tortoise habitat, turning it from this12 to this13. While the California Energy Commission had the opportunity to fully evaluate alternative sites such as the agricultural land around Daggett (east of Barstow – satellite view here14), it declined to do so because this alternative was deemed too “uneconomical” for the company. Thus, BrightSource is allowed to externalize its costs of doing business onto the environment and the public, while suitable land remains unutilized. This cost comes in the form of destroyed habitat for the desert tortoise, pushing it one step farther down the road to extinction. Biologists agree that the warning signs marking the end of that road are already clearly visible.

In a commentary on Huffington Post, the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope pointed out the lack of appropriate siting that has so far characterized renewable projects, in the California desert and elsewhere: “And because the Bureau of Land Management sets its royalty rates below those of the prevailing private market, solar and wind entrepreneurs have a perverse incentive to locate their facilities in the most pristine natural settings instead of in already developed (but often privately owned) locations.” These were encouraging words, since the Sierra Club has been on record as “not opposed” to the Ivanpah project. If large environmental groups are willing to go along with projects that threaten a signature species such as the desert tortoise, then there is little hope that we will achieve the “appropriate siting guidelines” to which so many pay lip service. And if this is the sacrifice they’re willing to make now, at the beginning of our efforts to combat the global warming crisis, how much longer will our National Parks and wilderness areas remain sacrosanct?

Oakland's BrightSource Energy, which already has a deal to build a series of huge solar power plants in the Mojave Desert for Pacific Gas & Electric, announced an even larger project Wednesday with Southern California Edison.

By 2016, the two companies said, BrightSource will build a series of solar-thermal power plants that will generate 1.3 gigawatts of electricity for Southern California Edison's customers. That's enough power for 845,000 homes, said Stuart Hemphill, the utility's vice president of renewable and alternative power. He characterized the deal as "the largest set of solar agreements ever signed."

Financial terms weren't disclosed, nor did the utility say how much it will pay for the power. California regulations require that such terms be kept confidential, Hemphill said.

Daniel Kammen, an energy and public-policy professor at the University of California-Berkeley, said the groundbreaking deal takes solar-thermal from a niche technology to the mainstream.

"This technology is not super-complicated," Kammen said. "The real issue is industrial capacity to build enough components fast enough."

BrightSource's first 100-megawatt solar plant for Edison will be in operation by 2013, said John Woolard, BrightSource's chief executive officer. From 2014 to 2016, six more 200-megawatt plants will follow.

The first plant will be located in the Ivanpah dry lake bed in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada border, where BrightSource intends to build two plants, totaling 300 megawatts, for PG&E. BrightSource officials wouldn't say where it will locate the remaining 600 megawatts of PG&E plants as well as the remaining 1.2 gigawatts of plants for Edison. It said it is working on obtaining land rights in several locations.

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Huge Solar Facility Planned For California Desert

Listen Now (12 min 27 sec)

Talk of the Nation, February 27, 2009 · Utility company Southern California Edison and solar startup BrightSource Energy announced a deal to build a solar-thermal plant that would generate 1,300 megawatts of power, slightly more than a modern nuclear plant, in the Mojave Desert. BrightSource CEO John Woolard discusses the project.