Solar farms in the Mojave Desert
In the establishment of large solar farms, environmental science is racing to catch up.
“In the fight against climate change, the Mojave Desert is about to take one for the team.”
An article in the L.A. Times entitled, “Sacrificing the desert to save the Earth” describes environmentalists agonizing over the high cost of breaking the reliance on fossil fuels (gasoline consumption is DOWN in California) to combat climate change.
Reporting from Ivanpah Valley, Calif.— Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the “power tower” emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.
Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California’s eastern border.
Photos of the environmental compromise are here. BrightSource Energy‘s Ivanpah solar power plant construction has meant mowing down desert plants, displacing dozens of animal species, and relocating scores of desert tortoises, which biologists say may kill up to a third of them.
An artist’s conception of the Ivanpah project shows the magnitude of the Ivanpah solar farm. A graphic description of the environmental impact of a solar farm displays some of the living components of the desert ecosystem. A map of planned solar farms on mostly government land in California illustrates the number and locations of planned development. Interestingly, the map also shows rough locations of natural preserves and military reservations.
Industrial-scale solar development is well underway in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration over the last decade — 21 million acres, more than the area of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties put together.
The BrightSource solar plant illustrates a technology that can be used to derive the maximum amount of energy from sunlight.
The $2-billion plant is an amalgam of gadgetry designed to wring the maximum energy from the sun. Computers continually focus the field of mirrors to a center tower filled with water, which will heat to more than 1,000 degrees. The resulting steam drives an array of turbines capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.
So why is the large-scale development of solar farms in the Mojave happening now?
What has opened the way for such a costly source of energy is the dramatic turn in federal policy. As early as 2005, the Bush administration established generous programs to reward renewable energy developers. The Obama administration sweetened the pot, offering $45 billion in federal tax credits, guaranteed loans and grants.
On the state level, former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger freed large solar plants from property tax and handed out $90 million in exemptions from sales and use taxes. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state invested more than $70 million in clean energy research last year, funded by a ratepayer surcharge.
Jeffrey Lovich, who studies desert tortoises for the U.S. Geologic Survey, in the preparation of a research paper found ONE prior work that analyzed the effects of large solar farms on wildlife. Essentially, Lovich said that no one understands what will happen to wildlife in the Mojave as the result of the large solar farms.
“This is an experiment on a grand scale,” Lovich said. “Science is racing to catch up.”
The urgency resulting from climate change (oh, it’s real) has forced difficult trade-offs.
Mainstream environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, Defenders of Wildlife and the Natural Resources Defense Council, have been largely mute, having traded the picket line for a seat at the table when development plans were drawn.
The Center for Biological Diversity, one of the nation’s most aggressively litigious environmental groups, has not challenged the Ivanpah project. It signed a confidential agreement not to oppose the project in exchange for concessions for the desert tortoise — mandating that BrightSource buy land elsewhere for conservation.
Some 24 environmental groups signed statements largely supporting the aims of solar developers. National environmental groups joined BrightSource and other solar companies in a letter sent Dec. 14 to the White House, asking the president to continue a federal renewable-energy subsidy.
The national office of the Sierra Club has had to quash local chapters’ opposition to some solar projects, sending out a 42-page directive making it clear that the club’s national policy goals superseded the objections of a local group. Animosity bubbled over after a local Southern California chapter was told to refrain from opposing solar projects.
The most opposition has come NOT from the environmental groups that you might have expected, but instead, from the federal government. Opposition has come from the National Park Service, since Joshua Tree, Death Valley, and the Mojave National Preserve are situated close by. The Department of Defense, with the China Lake weapons testing facility, Fort Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, Twentynine Palms Marine base and the Chocolate Mountain Naval Aerial Gunnery Range nearby has also raised questions. Pilots flying at 200 feet (or lower! 😉 ) are concerned with flying around 460-foot solar towers. The Marines have asked about glare from the arrays of solar reflectors. The Federal Aviation Administration is concerned about the heat plume from the Ivanpah towers as well as possible radar interference.
Meanwhile, experts estimate that, IF the solar farms fail economically, having secured billions of federal dollars, it will likely take hundreds of years to restore the desert.
In the search for clean energy, easy answers seem hard to find. Wind energy now supplies nearly 4,000 megawatts of electricity, 5% of California’s total energy needs, making the Golden State third nationwide, behind Texas and Iowa.
-Bill at
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