photo: eSolar
Last week Green Wombat wrote about how solar power plant developer eSolar may avoid conflicts over endangered species by building its solar farms on privately owned agricultural land rather than in desert areas home to a variety of protected wildlife.
At the opening ceremony of eSolar’s Sierra demonstration power plant outside Los Angeles on Aug. 5, Wildlands Conservancy executive director David Myers gave a speech praising the Pasadena company for not building power plants in fragile desert ecosystems while criticizing competitors. The Wildlands Consevancy, a Southern California non-profit, has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying up and preserving broad swaths of the Mojave Desert.
What my story did not point out was a connection between the Wildlands Conservancy and eSolar. The Wildlands Conservancy’s biggest backer has been Southern California investor and environmentalist David Gelbaum, who also serves on the green group’s board. Gelbaum’s Quercus Trust is an investor in eSolar and dozens of other green tech startups.
Green Wombat 
Quite honestly I think it is beyond stupid for eSolar to attack some of the other solar generators the way they did. I really hopes this one comes back to bite them in the behind. The last thing the solar industry needs right now is infighting among itself.
Now if I were a vindictive person, and I have been told I am, I would point out that eSolar is planning on building right near towns so you will have to look at all those ugly towers and all of those mirrors every day. And just think about all the construction traffic around town when they build this monstrosity. Oh and can you imagine how much noise it will produce. They are planning on building it on land we used to grow our food on. What chemicals will they use to clean the mirrors? Oh just think how much it will drive local property values down.
Now in reality none of these things should be too much of a problem but then again I don’t really find the towers ugly. But what is to stop one of eSolar’s competitors from firing up the locals. All are valid concerns.
Point being is I think it would be wise for eSolar to take a different tack. If we start getting into infighting nothing will get done and everyone loses
On a bright note I see Abengoa filed with the California Energy Commission to build a solar plant at Harper Lake. Hope they can get their transmission line issues worked out. Great place to build another solar plant, plenty of water and abandoned alfalfa fields.
Abengoa’s CEC filing is for a 250 MW parabolic trough plant on 1765 acres of privately held formerly agricultural land near Harper Lake in the CA Mojave desert:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/sitingcases/abengoa/index.html
eSolar is NOT special because they can use already disturbed land and I agree with the OP that they should dispense with all their crowing.