BY JANET ZIMMERMAN
Press-Enterprise
The developer of a controversial plan to cover as much of six square miles of public land with solar panels east of Barstow has abandoned the endeavor, citing changed market conditions.
It is the second massive solar project dropped in the past six months in Riverside and San Bernardino counties. In January, BrightSource Energy Co. announced that is was backing off from its plan to install mirrors on 12 square miles near Blythe because of cost issues.
The K Road Calico Solar Project had been proposed in an ecologically sensitive area north of Interstate 40, between Ludlow and Newberry Springs.
Environmentalists who sued to block the development said it would have fragmented an important corridor linking habitats of the desert tortoise, bighorn sheep and other threatened species, which range between land south of I-40 and the Cady Mountains; the solar site is in between.
“This is a really important area to keep intact, especially when you think what’s going to happen with these populations with climate change,” said Kim Delfino, California program director for Defenders of Wildlife in Sacramento, one of the groups that sued.
The land, about 37 miles east of Barstow, would have been covered with photovoltaic panels, generating — at full capacity — electricity for 250,000 homes
“It’s a victory in terms of stopping projects that are unfortunately sited, but it’s too bad we have to fight renewable energy projects. If we put them in the right places we’ll cheerlead for them. If they’re in the wrong place, we’ll fight them,” Delfino said Monday, June 24.
She and other critics said solar projects should be placed on abandoned agricultural fields and other degraded lands, which they say are readily available in the western Mojave.
They are working to identify appropriate locations through the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, she said. The DRECP, as it is known, is a multi-agency effort to identify which parts of the desert should be developed with renewable energy and which should be set aside for wildlife and other natural resources.
On June 21, K Road sent a letter from its San Francisco office to the California Energy Commission surrendering its license for the development.
The letter said: “Due to changed market conditions, we will not be able to move this project forward, either as licensed or as proposed to be amended.”
Reached Monday, June 24, K Road managing director Sean Gallagher declined to elaborate.
In 2010, the firm bought the project from Tessera Solar. K Road immediately announced a change from mirrored dishes to photovoltaic panels.
A spokesman at the time said when fully built, it would be the largest photovoltaic plant in the world.
An agreement to transmit the energy to the electrical grid had yet to be secured.
Calico is not the first large-scale solar farm to suffer setbacks.
Developer BrightSource Energy of Oakland has put two projects on hold this year.
In January, company officials said they were suspending plans for the Rio Mesa project near Blythe, above the Colorado River Valley. Rio Mesa, which already had been down-sized, would have consisted of three solar-concentrating towers and 85,000 mirrors. Critics raised concerns about the project’s effect on wildlife and other natural resources.
BrightSource officials said the suspension was because of anticipated delays from additional analysis needed at the site, which would have made it impossible to meet the terms of the company’s power purchase agreement with Southern California Edison.
In April, the company announced that it was suspending the permit application for the Hidden Hills Solar Energy Generating System in Pahrump Valley, 45 miles west of Las Vegas, because of delays in transmission upgrades.