Battle Brewing Over Giant Desert Solar Farm

[phantom power]

Tessera Solar plans to plant 34,000 solar dishes — each one 40 feet high and 38 feet wide — on 8,230 acres of the Mojave Desert in Southern California.

Although the lengthy licensing process for the Calico solar farm remains in the early stages, several environmental groups are already raising red flags about the massive project’s impact on such protected wildlife as the desert tortoise, the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and Nelson’s bighorn sheep.

...

Also jumping into the fray is a well-funded labor group that is pressing solar developers to employ union workers, and the Wildlands Conservancy, a Southern California non-profit that supports a proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to ban renewable energy development on hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mojave adjacent to Calico.

Most of the land for the solar farm would be leased from the federal government.

“Our feeling is the utility-scale project should first be sited on disturbed land, public or private, instead of pristine lands,” April Sall, the conservation director for the Wildlands Conservancy, told California Energy Commission staff at a recent hearing on the Calico project. “There are several endangered species, plant and animal, that would be affected by this project,” Ms. Sall said, adding that the “the side-blotched lizard” might also affected.

The labor group, called California Unions for Reliable Energy, sent an attorney and biologist to testify at the hearing. The group has come under fire for inundating developers who decline to sign labor agreements with demands that they conduct scores of costly environmental studies on their solar projects.

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/battle-brewing-over-giant-desert-solar-farm/

[Vinnie From Indy]

1. I hope they push ahead with the project

The world needs this technology to be further developed and implemented. The environmentalists opposing the farm seem oblivious to the impact on endangered species the world over if we continue to burn carbon based fuels. The scale is not even close to being balanced. While I admit not knowing the details of the site selection, the farm will undoubtedly cause some disruption in the eco-system wherever it might be located.

I would also venture to guess that DiFi is opposing this farm in the interests of big business and not in the interests of the nature loving general public.

[phantom power]

2. It's interesting to me, how philosophical people are about environmental impact...

as long as it's environmental impact from non-atom-splitting energy projects.

[OKIsItJustMe]

3. Well, I try to be philosophical about "nukes" as well…

However, somehow, long-term storage of high-level nuclear waste (and other concerns) weigh on me.

As for the impact of the large solar farm, I look at it this way. If we don't start transitioning to alternative sources quickly, and in a large scale, the desert ecosystem is likely to be toast in short order, certainly it will be severely disrupted.

I cannot imagine that it is impossible to work out some sort of accommodation between solar panels and desert flora and fauna.

[phantom power]

4. I think it's important (and fair) to own the environmental impacts...

of our energy sources. For example, being a pro-nuke, it's my responsibility to own things like Chernobyl and TMI, and Navajo cancer rates.

The point I'm trying to make is... On the one hand, I am told that 750 acres of wetlands is an unconscionable price to pay for 1.8 gigawatts of electricity at 90% capacity factor, but on the other hand, if some environmentalists have reservations about 8500 acres of protected desert, for 0.8 gigawatts of electricity at maybe 70% capacity factor (assuming good use of thermal storage), well those environmentalists are clearly misguided and standing in the way of Progress!

And Feinstein, instead of being a hero for protecting desert ecosystems, must clearly be acting as a corporate shill because... why? because it's a solar project, and not some other kind of project?

Really?

:shrug:

[OKIsItJustMe]

11. It is important (and fair)

These things need to be considered on balance.

At this time, I consider the draw-backs to conventional nuclear fission to be unacceptable (but less unacceptable than burning coal ;-) .) Forced to choose between nuclear fission and coal, I'd choose nuclear fission (as the lesser of two evils.) Given my preference, I choose neither. Being pragmatic, I don't suggest we can afford to shut down our current nuclear fission plants. (Yeah, I know, it's inconsistent, but there it is.) I don't want to see any new plants, and I want the old ones taken off-line ASAP (right now, it's not "P.")

In the long term, I hope to see (clean) nuclear fusion brought on-line. (That won't happen tomorrow, if ever.)

In the semi-long term, I believe our greatest hope lies in solar. To get the biggest "bang for the buck" and bring the greatest amount of solar generated electricity on-line as fast as we can, we need to start erecting solar farms where there is the greatest solar power available for "harvesting." In North America at least, that happens to be in the Desert South-West. (That's partly why the desert is a desert.)

I prefer PV to concentrating solar, because PV does not require the volumes of water CS does, but at this time, CS offers a relatively low-cost & efficient solution.

I have hope for "orbital solar" but (like clean nuclear fusion) that won't happen tomorrow (if ever.)

In the short term, I believe we need to keep building wind farms. (I hope to see these phased out and replaced by solar farms and/or clean fusion plants in the fullness of time.)

[truedelphi]

14. I share some of your thoughts on this.

Especially ones about keeping the older nuke plants up and working, though attempting to get rid of them as soon as possible.

However, I keep wishing that there was a greater voice for the concept of de-centralizing all these solar panels. What happens to migrating birds if theire is a huge centrailized soalr farm? Wouldn't it be better to spread them out and preserve the earth in the way that nature intended?

[phantom power]

5. Oh, one other observation about desert flora...

If you have ever gone hiking in a desert, you have probably seen the signs imploring hikers to stay on the trail, because if you go wandering around, you may kill plants that take 75 years or so to grow back. Every time you disturb an area of desert, you're setting the clock back by about a human lifetime.

[The2ndWheel]

8. "The world needs this technology"

Human civilization needs it. The world does fine without it.

[phantom power]

6. BTW, I thought the union-labor angle on this story was the most interesting.

Hadn't seen that kind of issue in the context of renewable energy before.

[Terry in Austin]

7. Only 12.9 square miles?

Not quite 10,000, but it's a start! B-)

[pscot]

10. That's an area larger than Berkeley

Just for reference.

[pscot]

9. It's hard to believe that the impact

will be limited to the site itself. They aren't going to sky-hook the men and materials in, then simply go away when it's done. There will be roads built and a continuous flow of traffic in and out and around the site. Transmission lines will be built. And if the project is successful, it would be only logical to expand the scale, since the transmission lines are already in. We've seen this kind of incremental raid on the environment thousands of times, invariably presented as a unique event, limited in its destructive scope. Next thing you know the camel is walking away with the tent.

[wuvuj]

15. Should be put on one of the military reservations...

...where they've already torn things up...not in raw untrammeled desert. Spent some time out there...would hate to see it spoiled...even for solar. Most just drive thru the desert and see wasteland...others have actually lived in it for extended periods...and know better.

[OKIsItJustMe]

12. A crucial last paragraph

http://greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/05/battle-brewing-over-giant-desert-solar-farm/?hp

…

And while the company acknowledged in its license application that the project would have “significant” impact on the desert tortoise and other plant and animal species, it also concluded that measures taken to minimize its environmental impact means that Calico “would not substantially affect, reduce the number of, or restrict the range of unique, rare, or endangered species of animal or plant, or the habitat of these species.”

[phantom power]

13. True... OTOH, Defenders of Wildlife and Wildlands Conservancy seem unconvinced.

So does California Unions for Reliable Energy, although they seem to be angling some kind of pro-union related resistance.

[Fotoware58]

16. NIMBYism...

raises its ugly head, yet again. Of course, they could put the thing out in the middle of Nevada or Utah but, power lines have to be installed to the site. Whether it's windmills or solar or biomass, people don't want it if it is in their own backyards. People will have to make sacrifices in order to have that clean power we all want and need.