photo: Wild Rose Images
California Senator Dianne Feinstein’s move to put a large swath of the Mojave Desert off-limits to renewable energy development is splitting the environmental movement and could derail some two dozen solar and wind power projects the state needs to comply with its ambitious climate change laws.
On the firing line are 17 massive solar power plants and six wind farms planned for federal land — land that would be designated a national monument under legislation Feinstein intends to introduce. The solar projects in question would be built by a range of companies, from startups BrightSource Energy and Stirling Energy Systems to corporate heavyweights Goldman Sachs (GS) and FPL (FPL), according to federal documents. (For the complete list, see below.)
The companies are among scores that have filed lease claims on a million acres of acres of desert dirt controlled by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. California utilities PG&E (PCG) and Southern California Edison (EIX) have signed long-term power purchase agreements for some of the projects now in jeopardy and are counting on the electricity they would produce to meet state-mandated renewable energy targets. PG&E itself has filed a solar power plant land claim in the proposed national monument.
The area of the desert in dispute is some 600,000 acres formerly owned by Catellus, the real estate arm of the Union Pacific Railroad, and donated to the federal government a decade ago by the Wildlands Conservancy, a Southern California environmental group. About 210,000 of those acres are managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which opened part of the land to renewable energy projects.
“Many of the sites now being considered for leases are completely inappropriate and will lead to the wholesale destruction of some of the most pristine areas in the desert,” Feinstein wrote in a letter to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar released last week, notifying him that she will introduce legislation to designate the former Catellus lands a national monument. “Beyond protecting national parks and wilderness from development, the conservation of these lands has helped to ensure the sustainability of the entire desert ecosystem by preserving the vital wildlife corridors.”
The Catellus land controlled by the BLM forms something of a golden triangle between the Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve in Southern California and are particularly coveted for renewable energy development because of its proximity to transmission lines.
Alan Stein, a deputy district manager for the BLM in California, told Green Wombat that the solar and wind lease claims are in areas that are not designated as wilderness or critical habitat for protected species like the desert tortoise. “This is public domain land, ” he says.
Tortoises, however, are found across the Mojave, and battles over Big Solar’s impact on endangered wildlife are quietly brewing in several solar power plant licensing cases now being reviewed by the California Energy Commission. Environmentalists find themselves walking a thin green line, trying to balance their interest in promoting carbon-free energy with protecting fragile desert landscapes and a host of threatened animals and plants.
Take BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah 400-megawatt solar power plant complex on the California-Nevada border. The three solar power plants to be built by the Oakland-based company will supply electricity to PG&E and Southern California Edison. But the project will also destroy some 4,000 acres of desert tortoise habitat and at least 25 tortoises will have to be relocated – a somewhat risky proposition as previous efforts in other cases have resulted in the deaths of the animals.
On Wednesday, the California Energy Commission granted two national environmental groups – the Defenders of Wildlife and the Sierra Club – the right to intervene in the Ivanpah case. “Defenders strongly supports … the development of renewable energy in California,” Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife, wrote to the energy commission in a Jan. 23 letter. “Defenders has several serious concerns about the potential impacts of this project on a number of rare, declining and listed species and on their associated desert habitat and waters.”
Natural Resources Defense Council attorney Johanna Wald wrote a letter with the Wilderness Society expressing concern over the impact of Ivanpah project on the desert tortoise but also made a strong statement of support for renewable energy development. “Our public lands harbor substantial wind, solar, and geothermal resources,” wrote Wald, who serves on a state task force to identify appropriate areas for renewable energy development. “Developing some of these resources will be important to creating a sustainable energy economy and combating climate change.”
The big national enviro groups are working with the government and power plant developers to create zones in the Mojave where renewable energy projects would be permitted while setting aside other areas that are prime habitat and wildlife corridors. A similar effort is underway on the federal level to analyze the desert-wide impact of renewable energy development.
Local environmental organizations, however, have split with the Big Green groups over developing the desert and other rural areas. In San Luis Obispo County, Ausra, SunPower (SPWRA) and First Solar’s (FSLR) plans to build three huge solar farms within miles of each other has prompted some local residents worried about the impact on wildlife to organize in opposition to the projects.
And some small Mojave Desert green groups pledge to go to court to stop big solar projects. “We don’t want to see the Endangered Species Act gutted for the sake of mega solar projects,” veteran grass roots activist Phil Klasky told Green Wombat last year for a story on the solar land rush in the Mojave. “I can say the smaller environmental organizations I’m involved with are planning to challenge these projects.”
It would be unwise to underestimate Klasky. In the 1990s, he helped lead a long-running and successful campaign to scuttle the construction of a low-level radioactive waste dump in tortoise territory in the Mojave’s Ward Valley – now a prime solar spot.
Still, while California’s senior senator’s move in the Mojave may exacerbate rifts in the environmental movement over renewable energy, it also could galvanize efforts to resolve critter conflicts in a comprehensive way. Otherwise, environmentalists of varying hues may find themselves fighting each other rather than global warming.
Update: I just had a conversation with BrightSource spokesman Keely Wachs, who takes issue with my characterization that the Ivanpah project will “destroy” desert tortoise habitat. He points out that the company is taking care to minimize the impact of the power plant on the surrounding desert and that wildlife may still occupy the site. It would be more accurate to say that the project will remove desert tortoise habitat from active use during Ivanpah’s construction and operation.
(Below is a list of solar and wind projects that fall within the proposed Mojave national monument. Note: Solar Investments is a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs and Boulevard Associates is a subsidiary of FPL.)
People are so stuck on solar and wind power. These technologies are not the best out there. Geothermal presents a efficient clean way to get energy without massive acres of land and will always produce energy at a constant rate. Plus, geothermal has NO bioproducts, except steam. Get off this solar and wind kick and look into the benefits of geothermal for once, it will surprise you!
Dianne Feinstein does not have the ability to determine if these needed facilities should be built. I hope that if she blocks this, they turn her lights out first.
This is a misguided effort on the part of Senator Feinstein and others. They have good intentions but are not seeing the forest for the trees.
Here’s why. Scientists have said that with business as usual carbon emissions, the U.S. southwest, along with a third of the globe will experience a drought for 1,000 years that will reduce soil moisture in the area by up to 50%. This will devastate the entire desert ecosystem along with other negative effects to water supplies, agriculture etc.
Besides that, solar thermal power plants with heat storage are perhaps our most promising renwewable energy source. These plants can produce steady base load power day and night.
This is the renewable that can replace base load coal plants, which is the number one priority in the fight against global warming. This should be a top energy priority and should be encouraged in a big way.
Solar thermal is also called CSP or concentrated solar power, and harnesses the heat of the sun to drive a steam powered generator. It is extremely low tech and uses ordinary materials.
An area 92 miles by 92 miles in total, or 1% of our southwest deserts, could power the entire country with solar thermal power plants. This is less land than now used for coal mining and coal plants. That’s right, less land than now used by coal mines and coal plants. And this is with far less land impact than that from coal.
Care should be taken to lessen the impact on the desert, but should not derail these projects which are of immense importance.
These areas near existing transmission lines are needed to jumpstart this industry and get it up to scale. Areas that are not near power lines will need the new HVDC transmission lines built, which will take years.
Both are necessary in the long run, but we need to get started building these plants now.
Solar thermal can already produce power at half the price of PV solar and will be competitive with dirty coal and gas in the near future. It already beats coal with CCS technology, which will not be cheap coal power. It also can beat the prices from any new nuclear plants and will be less than half their price in ten years. I’m referring to electricity prices.
Using molten salt, oil or water to store heat during the day, solar thermal can run at night. Plants are being built with 6-8 hours heat storage, and 12-14 hours of storage is completely feasable. CSP can also be built very fast compared with new coal or nuclear plants.
A typical Liberal….Green is great as long as it is not in MY back yard….are you listening Teddy???
There’s something oddly poetic about seeing the environmental hardliners turning on themselves in an effort to corner the market on what’s “best for the planet.”
Regardless, we have to do something. I agree with the previous comment regarding geothermal energy, but it all comes down to whether it can be profitable without a government subsidy. If the model forgoes dipping into tax revenue to make it viable, then I’m all for it.
We already know that nuclear works – there’s just that stigma that it has a hard time shaking. Improving the power grid so less power is lost during transition is also key.
Wind and solar power is very inefficient. I hate how these are often shoved to the forefront when there are far better alternatives. As to why this is the case, follow the money trail…
I think Feinstein is a liberal idiot. We are putting much more at stake than a few turtles by not moving towards alternative “green” sources of energy!
Geothermal power is indeed a superb source of renewable energy, though an MIT study last year surmised that it could only replace about 10% of our current electrical energy consumption. Hence, wind and solar continue to be important technologies to solving our future energy challenge.
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/geothermal.html
The solar cells themselves are very toxic to animal life and water. Why are our politicians cramming this pollution down our throats?
I am so tired of this….. I don’t want to have a carbon foot print…down with fossil fuels…..NO NUKE……Big solar kills tortoise and ground squirrels….Wind farms kill birds and bats…..Off shore distorts MY view and resale value… NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY NIMBY. That’s all I hear, there is nothing left, this isn’t Star Trek, we don’t have clean limitless anti-matter crystal power. Everyone has an agenda, and could care less about the entire picture and what we as humanity needs to survive. No I do not want to live in the angry ECO NATZI’s view of how the world should be, I DO NOT want to be a hobbit, nor do I part of the churn and burn oligarchy ideology either.
I have WORKED in the blue collar end of power generation for 20 years, and have seen what works and what doesn’t work, I by no means claim to be an expert in this area, or I would change my job title and make more money. Most of what I have seen has been generated to create ecological red tape in order to halt a project, garner a union worker beneficial contract, or some one tries to fill some guilty void in their life and try to save something, anything, I must subjugate my guilt…. We had an endangered plant (bush) near our site during construction. Its only ONE of two known sites that this plant (weed) grows in the ENTIRE world, but that was only because no one wanted to tell THEM about the other canyons full of this rare plant (which cattle feed upon) or else garner the taxing eye of the uber-savior, best to let this harbinger alone. Once the money and resources were tapped out, barricades and sign erected, no one has come again in 18 years to check on this poor little sprout. Just to close the case for your personal enlightenment these six plants have died, once access was denied and they were deemed protected from people and cattle, the other more robust plants choked them out, rather quickly. The artificial habitats now contain lush green scrub brush, with no hint of this MELLO-WEED, these other canyons previously mentioned, its still there, now the only “unknown” place in the world where this plant grows.
This is for those of you that no doubt intend to flame me….
There is nothing left in this world, so why don’t you just go burry yourselves up to your genitals in the soil, paint your hands green, stare and reach for the sun lemmingly. While your retinas burn out and you begin to desiccate back into the earth, know then you have actually provided something beneficial in the form of decomposition. The rest of the country can get back to responsible energy generation. It is by no means perfect, and the standards of good stewardship have been improving, so maybe a few kudos to the greenies for awareness, but mostly its due to the everyday working people who want to live in THIS WORLD. If we do not greatly reduce our dependence on foreign energy and materials, the cost to ourselves and future generations will weight this great country down. We cannot curtail, and Hobbit down size our way forward we must use all available technology and resources responsibly. Sustainable and renewable are the only long term solutions we have as a species, but we have to use what we have now to get there, or we pay a finders fee in the form of carbon credits, taxes, and endless legislation, to those that get there first. These costs will all get passed down to the average person on the street, if you haven’t seen that already, get ready for spikes in energy across the board. The eco-natzi’s have been using a broad brush to spread guilt and fear, you are either with us or an enemy to the planet, I am not the planets enemy, I want to push the line back to a reasonable and responsible altruism of what we had and can have again. You cannot please everyone; we only have to do what is best for us as a nation, not a small vocal minority.
Hagar
Classic “Bait & Switch”! OMG, we gotta convert to expensive renewable energy to save the planet. Sorry, too bad you can’t do it in my backyard.
100 new 4th generation NUCLEAR power plants would solve America’s electricity problem once and for all. Ecosnobs don’t have to look at 100,000 ugly wind turbines or millions of acres of solar panels.
Yucca mountain was certified and ready to receive the nuclear waste – but now funding has been eliminated in the budget.
Wind and solar energy are not 24/7/365 reliable producers and are 3-5 times more expensive than coal, natural gas and nuclear.
I feel sorry for the unemployed Californians who are about to get another “kick in the face” from their hypocritical government officials. So much for low-paying “green” jobs in CA.
Don’t anyone dare set up “tent cities” in the designated “wilderness” areas!
To Steve Davis,
Granted solar cells contain some very nasty components, they only are a threat if not treated or they are buried. I’m pretty sure that Solar Panels have a coating on them to prevent rain runoff. Otherwise, they would be useless after the first storm.
While Feinstein’s move may appear to be a typical NIMBY approach to those that don’t live in the southwest desert, it doesn’t mention the fact that there are already hundreds of rooftops here that would be a BETTER location for all that solar. HOWEVER, the large energy companye like SCE and PG& E wouldn’t be able to control and then charge for the energy if it was on my roof. Plus, we wouldn’t have to have all the destruction caused by the transmission of energy out in the desert. What we NEED is LEGISLATION that allows us to put solar on all the roof tops and then sell the energy into the grid…the best place to generate clean energy is right where it will be used. If this happened then every community in the desert southwest would be a power plant!
Don’t Californians wonder why they have the second highest unemployment rate in the country? Can you say the phrase “hostile to business”?
Idiots.
1. Why are half of you guys screaming about NIMBY?
This is NOT an issue of NIMBY, this is an issue of land that was DONATED originally for the SOLE purpose of being a habitat.
2. And yes, I’m sure that the solar cells are toxic but we’re not trying to feed them to wildlife or trying to dump them in the local river, now are we?!
3. Nuclear will never be a viable option because it takes hundreds of thousands of years for the waste to be non-radioactive. So think if we triple the amount of waste and do that for 60 yrs….where in the hell will all of it go?! Nuclear has the potential to be a far worse mess than oil, coal or any other fossil fuel could ever be.
Here is a potential solution to the problem. A financial instrument that would incentivize both parties toward tortoise stewardship: biodiversity derivatives
http://www.advancedconservation.org/blog/?m=200902
The idea of one contributor to just place solar panels on every roof top doesn’t make economic sense, as you need large foot prints to get the economy of scale to make the very best use of the investment in solar energy. I just installed a 8.7KW array on my home and the cost was $61,000, my roof size and orientation is perfect and about the best possible situation you could have for a home installation, and it generates only about half of the energy we use. If you compare this to something like the Solana Project that was proposed in the desert here it’s a much different scale and return on investment. Every acre used would generate enough power for about 12 homes. You can’t do that on roof tops. All the meters, wiring, inverters and other hardware screw the cost way up. The Mojave Desert is 33 million acres. If you folks in California can bring yourselves to allocate few thousand acres of that, to cover the electrical demand for 10’s of thousands of homes then you are as foolish in that choice as you are in electing people like Feinstein and Nancy Pelosi
Gerard in Sacramento is incorrect regarding nuclear waste. Modern reactor designs can burn the nuclear fuel *much* more completely than the old “once through” nuclear reactors of 40 years ago. Much of the so-called “nuclear waste” is actually unused fuel, contaminated with fission products. New reactor designs can burn these fission products to generate power.
As a result, with the proper reactor designs, the amount of waste produced is a tiny fraction of what existing reactors produce. Furthermore, modern reactors would allow us to burn all of the waste we have just sitting around our old reactors.
What little waste is produced by a modern reactor has a half-life several orders of magnitude smaller than the half-life of the unused fuel currently classified as waste. The half-life of the waste from a modern reactor is so short that in a relatively short 300 years it would decay to the point that it would be no more radioactive than normal background radiation.
Look up integral fast reactors for more information.
Even if solar panels were nothing more toxic than pine, the desert ecology would be massively changed by the acres of shade created by the panels. I am not a tree hugger, but no change happens without affecting many other things, which are frequently overlooked until it is too late. We should be cautious about radical changes until we have studied them from many aspects.
I would agree with one thing stated on here and that is if the originally donated land was for the “express” purpose it should be protected then that is what should happen. I have no idea what the original agreement was. Now as far as these solar projects destroying the desert that is pretty far from what will happen. The reality is there is a huge amount of land out there. The critters and solar can co-exist. The hard truth is there is just no way to produce power that does not have consequences. Many people see how much land is being spoken for and assume that all of it will be used. Really these companies are just staking claims hoping that they will be able to build on some of it or make money selling the rights for others to do it. I know that one large plant that Nextera (FPL) hopes to build is on land that was once an alfalfa farm. Not exactly the best crop to grow in the desert.
Now I, like Hagar, work in the power industry. My own opinion is that we need to build some of these projects. We need to find out what works and what does not. Solar thermal has the ability to behave much more like a conventional power plant and that is necessary if we are going to actually use renewables for more than just a tiny amount of our power. We have many new designs that could be a large improvement over our over twenty year old ones we are using now.
Now what solar is not “right now” is a proven technology that can replace conventional sources of power. That is not to say that someday it won’t be able too but we are still in the development stage now. The only way it can “guarantee” power 24/7 is with backup natural gas. This sounds ok but it is burned at about half the efficiency of a combined cycle plant.
HA! There is _no_ land that the greens cannot cook up some objection to using.
It is delightful to watch the envirowackos battle each other for a change. But of course the people of California, and ultimately the nation, will slip farther into the “poor get poorer” part of the familiar phrase, while other parts of the world dispense with the nonsense and build what’s needed. More of our manufacturing will go overseas. Less money will come here for investment because we will be in continuous rolling brownouts and blackouts as the nasty old coal plants are shut down.
Yep, welcome to socialism’s march from sea to shining sea. Hope all you that voted democrat are happy with the result.
We already have plenty of protected California desert with the largest national park, Death Valley, Joshua Tree and the Mojave preserve. “Destroying habitat” is a bit extreme, after the setup phase the tortoises will probably enjoy the shade. We would be better served by the reduction in carbon emissions!
I’d guess Feinstein is just trying to build a legacy for herself at the expense of energy self-sufficiency
There needs to be some balance here. I have concerns over how we get our energy… and am sick of coal. Solar CLEARLY has the least impact of any current forms of energy generation. Would you rather have a bunch of solar panels in the desert, or continue slicing off the tops of mountains and burning coal. Becuase if you keep shooting down solar, thats what we are gonna have. Which one causes more damage?
I’d just like to say that tree-huggers need to balance their priorities… in life there’s always opportunity cost associated to every decision… now, which one is it going to be: undisturbed tortoises or sustainable development? Get your priorities straight.
This must be very frustrating to all the renewable energy developers who already have to jump through so many hoops in CA. I agree that many of the environmental groups are shooting themselves in the foot trying to turn NIMBY into BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anything), but on the other hand most solar PV and thermal start with “scraping” the desert floor so nothing much can live there. Sorta like monoculture tree plantations compared to a real diverse forest.
I think the best solution is to bring in a respected organization like the Nature Conservancy to determine which parts of this huge area are most necessary as habitat, and let the renewable developers say which parts are best for windpower and solar, and hope they don’t all overlap. NC has done this with oil and gas leases in Colorado, it was very useful to everybody.
In the end, the Endangered Species Act is going to have to be re-written to allow for “triage” – we just aren’t going to be able to save all (or perhaps even most) species of concern. This was my biggest takeaway from the 5th CA Climate Change Research Conference, which I attended last year in Sacto. We can’t have our cake and eat it too, not when the cake is going to be submerged by rising oceans in coming decades.
I wish we could take the electricity away from all these people who seem to find a way to block any form of advancing our country from weaning itself from foreign oil. Conservation should include taking the electricity away from those who choose to protest its production. I say screw them let them eat raw food in the dark!!!!