Eagle Mountain hydropower plant takes big step forward

A massive iron ore mining pit at Eagle Mountain in the remote desert east of the Coachella Valley. The Eagle Mountain iron mine was built in 1948 and closed in 1982. Today, some conservationists believe the old mine should become part of Joshua Tree National Park, which surrounds it on three sides. Eagle Mountain is just miles from the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight solar plant, which is set to come fully online in January, and the small town of Desert Center. (Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Sammy Roth
The Desert Sun

A controversial proposal to build a hydropower plant in the shadow of Joshua Tree National Park cleared a major hurdle Wednesday, in a surprising development that frustrated conservationists but encouraged some renewable energy advocates.

After two decades of trying to acquire the old Eagle Mountain iron mine — which was carved out of the southeast corner of Joshua Tree more than 60 years ago — the Eagle Crest Energy Company has finally succeeded. The Los Angeles-based firm announced Wednesday that it has purchased the site from the company formerly known as Kaiser Ventures, which built the long-dormant iron mine and for years refused to sell.

Eagle Crest's plan to build a 1,300-megawatt hydroelectric power plant — using billions of gallons of groundwater that would be drawn from an underground aquifer — still has to overcome several regulatory obstacles. But the proposal is now closer than ever to becoming a reality.

The project's backers say it would help California build more solar and wind power, a key priority as the state moves toward a 50 percent renewable energy mandate. The hydroelectric plant would work like a battery, storing excess energy generated by solar and wind farms when supply exceeds demand, and then releasing that energy when demand exceeds supply.

"As Riverside County continues to increase its role in delivering renewable power to the rest of California, we need to find ways to store energy for use at times when solar and wind are not generating power," county Supervisor John Benoit said in a statement released by Eagle Crest. "This project helps make renewable energy sources more viable, and in an environmentally sensitive manner."

But conservation groups and national parks advocates have slammed the proposal, saying it would waste water, harm several threatened species and use more energy than it generates. Many of them want to see Eagle Mountain added to Joshua Tree National Park, saying it has historic value as a well-preserved mining boomtown, in addition to conservation value.

"The costs significantly outweigh the benefits here," said David Lamfrom, California desert program director for the National Parks Conservation Association. "Whether you're looking at it from the angle of water or the angle of wildlife, this corporation wins and the public loses."

Nothing is simple when it comes to Eagle Mountain, which has been the subject of fiery debate in recent years.

Industrialist Henry Kaiser founded the iron mine and built the adjacent town in the 1950s, but the mine was shut down in the early 1980s as production of steel in the United States waned. For more than 25 years, the Kaiser subsidiary that still owned the site wanted to sell it to the Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, which would have turned it into a massive garbage dump. But that plan got tied up in court, and eventually the agency backed off.

Even when that plan fell through, Kaiser officials insisted they wouldn't sell the site to Eagle Crest, saying they had received a great deal of interest from mining companies. Eagle Mountain still has millions of tons of iron ore.

The deal with Eagle Crest is something of a compromise, because Kaiser will retain the right to sell rock and iron ore tailings that already sit in plain view at Eagle Mountain. A Kaiser representative didn't respond to a request for comment Wednesday, but the company will presumably try to sell that right to another company, since it has been in bankruptcy for several years.

That deal will no doubt frustrate conservationists, who oppose the hydropower plant as well as further mining.

In order to fill the reservoirs of the hydroelectric plant, about nine billion gallons of groundwater would be pumped from the aquifer under the Chuckwalla Valley over a period of four years. Eagle Crest officials have argued that's a small fraction of the groundwater held in the aquifer, and equivalent to the annual consumption of two Coachella Valley golf courses.

Conservation groups, though, say that kind of water consumption is irresponsible, especially during a historic drought. Park officials also worry that drawing on the aquifer could harm threatened species in and around the park.

"The potential that we could substantially deplete all of the springs in these three basins terrifies me," David Smith, superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park, told The Desert Sun last year. "It has the potential for wiping out bighorn sheep populations from all those areas."

Local activists have also accused Kaiser of illegally conspiring with state mining officials to keep control of Eagle Mountain, arguing that the company should have been required to give the site back to the federal government after it stopped mining iron.

For renewable energy advocates, the question of how to ramp up intermittent renewables like solar and wind — which only generate electricity when the sun shines or the wind blows — has long been a major challenge. With Californian lawmakers likely to adopt a 50 percent renewable energy mandate in the next few months, that challenge has become more pressing.

Right now, utility companies generally turn to natural gas-fired power plants, which contribute to climate change, to help integrate more solar and wind onto the grid. Some renewable energy experts say "pumped storage" projects like Eagle Mountain can help reduce the need for natural gas.

That argument appealed to Benoit, a longtime renewable energy supporter. The Riverside County supervisor said that while more environmental review is needed, he's hopeful the project's benefits will outweigh its potential impacts on water and wildlife.

"Those are issues that will be evaluated thoroughly in the environmental process," he said in an interview. "My guess is, it will come in on the side of, 'Yes, it does make sense.'"

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission granted a license for the Eagle Mountain hydroelectric plant last year, but the proposal still needs to clear several legal hurdles, despite Eagle Crest now owning the land.

For one, the National Park Service petitioned the energy commission to reconsider its decision last August, and the agency has yet to respond to that request. Eagle Crest also still needs approval from the federal Bureau of Land Management to build transmission lines across public lands.

The biggest obstacle, though, could be pushback from local activists and national parks advocates, who could try to keep the hydroelectric plant tied up in court. Some have pointed out that parts of Eagle Mountain are designated for conservation under the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, an ongoing state-federal effort that would lay the ground rules for the next 25 years of clean energy development and conservation across the California desert.

Eagle Crest submitted comments to the Bureau of Land Management asking it to reverse those designations.

Desert plan shifts focus to public land

Federal and state officials put plans for privately owned land on the back burner.

Larry LaPre, a wildlife biologist for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, describes the location of a solar energy development planned near the Mojave National Preserve.

BY DAVID DANELSKI
Press-Enterprise

A ballyhooed energy development and land conservation plan for California’s deserts will now focus just on public lands managed by the federal government, at least for the time being, state and federal officials announced Tuesday, March 10.

The Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan has been hailed by the Obama administration as an all-encompassing plan for the desert regions of seven counties, including Riverside and San Bernardino.

In the works since 2009, its goal was to get federal, state and local officials to agree on the best places to locate huge solar, wind and geothermal projects while also preserving the desert’s most important wildlife habitat, and archeological and recreational areas.

When the 8,000-page draft was released last fall, U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell appeared in Palm Springs to promote it.

The draft called for directing alternative energy development to 2 million acres of mostly privately owned land that is expected to have little value as endangered-species habitat.

But after receiving 12,000 public comments on the plan, federal Bureau of Land Management and California Energy officials, in a conference call with reporters, appeared to reel back expectations, if not the plan itself.

With no certain time frame, the plan now is being broken into phases, the first of which will pertain only to public lands managed by the BLM, said Jim Kenna, the agency’s California director.

Planning for privately owned land will be delayed to give local officials in the seven counties more time to complete their own planning initiatives, he said.

The draft plan now calls for some 392,000 acres of public land for focused alternative-energy development, 4.9 million acres for conservation and 3.6 million for recreation, Kenna said.

Officials with Riverside and San Bernardino counties have expressed concerns that large-scale solar increases demand for county fire and sheriff’s services without providing the county additional property tax revenue.

San Bernardino County officials also are concerned that large-scale solar projects could be made obsolete by other technological advances.

“We don’t want obsolete solar projects on land that would have been good for other kinds of development,” said county spokesman David Wert.

Ileene Anderson, a biologist with the Center for Biological Diversity, said it was disconcerting that the focus now is on public land, because most of the already disturbed land most appropriate for development is privately owned.

“This was supposed to be a grand, coordinated plan,” she said.

Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan

What is it? A proposed land-use plan for California's deserts that strives to place big solar, wind and geothermal projects in place that do the least harm to wildlife habitat and cultural resources.

Where is it? Desert portions of Imperial, Inyo, Kern, Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego counties.

Who is doing it? The plan is a collabaration led by the Calfornia Energy Commission and U.S. Department of Interior.

What's is the Preferred Alternative?

A version of that calls for:

-- Renewable energy development focus on more than 2 million acres of public and private land, where environmental conflicts are expected to be minimal.

-- Conservation designations for 4.9 million acres of public land managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management.

-- Recreation designations on more than 3.6 million acres of BLM-managed lands.

-- More than 183,000 acres of land identified for future analysis.

Source: The California Energy Commission

BLM rejectes application for Silurian Valley energy project

Kailah Miles,11, of Apple Valley and her brother Rex, 8, walk back to their family's campsite at the Dumont Dunes in the Silurian Valley. The BLM rejected an energy project in the area. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

By JULIE CART
Los Angeles Times

The Bureau of Land Management on Thursday denied a Spanish company's application to build a controversial renewable energy facility in the Mojave Desert's remote Silurian Valley, deciding the sprawling project “would not be in the public interest.”

The closely watched decision is considered a bellwether for how the federal agency will handle future requests to develop renewable energy projects outside established development areas.

The company had planned a side-by-side wind and solar facility. Thursday's decision applies only to the solar portion of the project. The wind energy aspect is still in the planning stages.

Jim Kenna, the BLM's California director, made the decision, finding that Iberdrola Renewables' proposal would have industrialized 24 square miles of “a largely undisturbed valley that supports wildlife, an important piece of the Old Spanish National Historic Trail, and recreational and scenic values.”

Kenna said he had been discussing the matter for weeks with field personnel and found the evidence “pretty persuasive.”

He cited concerns that the project would degrade the quality of the wilderness surrounding the site, located between two national parks. He also noted potential hazards to the desert tortoise and other impacts that could not be mitigated.

“It was fairly clear to me,” he said.

Iberdrola Renewables had sought permission to build its project using a “variance” process. Had it been approved, it would have been the first major exception to federal land managers' “guided development” approach across more than 22 million acres of California desert. Under the policy, companies are encouraged to develop in areas that have been pre-approved for projects, where there would be less environmental or wildlife conflict.

Kenna said the variance process was intended to be rigorous. In denying the application, no other message was intended other than the specific project was unsuitable for the specific site, he said.

Iberdrola began the application process three years ago and had envisioned completing construction by December.

In a statement, Iberdrola said it was weighing whether to appeal the decision to the U. S. Department of Interior.

“It is unfortunate that the variance process is enabling unsubstantiated discretion in advance of a proper National Environmental Policy Act review that should be based on clear and understandable predictable requirements,” the statement said.

But the BLM decided that the project would have “too great of an impact on the resources.”

Among the specific concerns the BLM noted were that the facility would disrupt migration corridors critical to bighorn sheep and other wildlife.

“We are quite pleased that the BLM made this decision,” said Kim Delfino, the California program director for Defenders of Wildlife. “It's encouraging that they are taking those criteria seriously.”

The wind and solar plants that Iberdrola proposed would have been encircled by protected lands. The entire project site that the company proposed sits atop the Old Spanish Trail, a historic trail managed by the National Park Service, which opposed the project.

In its application, Iberdrola said the plants would create 300 construction jobs and generate about 400 megawatts of power.

The BLM is under pressure to meet the administration's goal of generating 20,000 megawatts of power from federal land by 2020. There have been 460 applications for renewable-energy-related projects in California since 2007, Kenna said. The BLM has approved 18 applications.

Southern California Desert Management Plan Worries Activists

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

California power lines, Feb. 21, 2011 (Robert Couse-Baker)

By Erik Anderson
KPBS.org

A sweeping renewable energy management plan for Southern California's desert regions is stirring fears about potential new solar farms and transmission lines in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Federal and state officials have been crafting a desert management plan for five years.

The recently unveiled proposal would help manage development and habitat protection on 22 million acres of federal, state and privately owned land in the eastern part of the state.

The idea is to streamline the development process for renewable energy projects on about two million acres.

East County resident Donna Tisdale has fought against backcountry development for years. She's trying to get the word out that this plan could have major negative impacts.

"I had to contact a lot of farmers in the Imperial Valley to try and get them up to speed on what was going on," Tisdale said. "People in East County were kind of shocked to hear that there's at least one more 500 KV line, like Sunrise Powerlink, proposed."

Sunrise Powerlink is a 117-mile transmission line that connects San Diego with the Imperial Valley. It was put into service June 17, 2012.

The plan's architects consist of what they call "an unprecedented collaborative effort between the California Energy Commission, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service also known as the Renewable Energy Action Team."

The state and federal coalition is currently seeking public comment.

The desert energy and conservation protection plan is scheduled to be finalized next year.

2 supervisors oppose giant wind project

Lovingood, Ramos write letter to BLM

North Peak Wind Project map. Wind turbines and giant power poles of the renewable energy project could invade Apple Valley scenery.

By STAFF REPORTS
Victorville Daily Press

SAN BERNARDINO — Supervisors James Ramos and Robert A. Lovingood submitted a joint letter to the Bureau of Land Management on Thursday strongly opposing the North Peak Wind Project planned for 16.4 square miles of mountain ridges overlooking much of the Victor Valley.

In the letter to BLM Director Neil Kornze, Ramos and Lovingood cited the anticipated harm to property values, viewsheds, Native American cultural resources, interference with radar tracking of aircraft and environmental concerns.

“The anticipated impacts on plants and animals are devastating, including the regular and continuous killing of bald eagles, golden eagles, bats and numerous migratory bird species that use the avian corridor along the ridgelines in question,” the supervisors said in the letter.

The project is planned for mountain ridges overlooking Lucerne Valley, Apple Valley and Hesperia.

“San Bernardino County has already borne the brunt of renewable energy projects,” Lovingood said. “For a wide variety of reasons, this is the wrong location for this project, and I urge the BLM to reject the North Peak Wind Project.”

The project is proposed by E.ON Climate & Renewables North America and promises to deliver 120 megawatts of electricity, enough to power about 33,000 homes.

The 71-turbine project application is on hold until about November at BLM’s Barstow Field Office.

“Due to the damaging impact the North Peak Wind project would cause for the community, their property values and overall quality of life, I am opposing the development of this project,” Ramos said. “San Bernardino County has made great strides to become a leader in renewable energy projects. However, this project would have significant, detrimental effects (on) the environment and cultural resources that exist in this area. I ask that the BLM take these issues under consideration and reject this project.”

The letter from Lovingood and Ramos notes that while the project is on federal land, San Bernardino County retains authority over local roads, including necessary widening of roads for construction crews to access the project site.

Mojave Solar: Can big power make it online?

Mojave Solar Project near Hinkley, California under construction.

GARY BRODEUR, STAFF WRITER
Victorville Daily Press

HINKLEY — One of the world’s largest solar-thermal projects is progressively going online this year, but not all of its power can be delivered unless more transmission lines are installed, experts say.

Nestled against the small community of Lockhart, about 20 miles northwest of Barstow on the edge of Harper Lake, the Mojave Solar project comes with a $1.6 billion price tag and a $1.2 billion loan guarantee from the U.S. Department of Energy. Financial closing from the Federal Financing Bank helped start construction in 2011.

The project is the second of its type in the United States being built by Abengoa Solar, a Spain-based corporation. It will help fulfill the state’s mandate that 33 percent of electrical power supplied in California must come from renewable-energy sources by 2020.

“Mojave Solar will produce the clean energy equivalent to that needed to power approximately 90,000 households,” Abengoa Solar spokesman Luis Rejano Flores said in an email from corporate offices in Spain.

When completed, Mojave Solar will occupy 1,765 acres of mainly fallow alfalfa fields and use concentrating solar power, “a new parabolic trough technology that will be more efficient and cost effective” than previous solar-energy plants, the company says.

The installation at Mojave Solar’s two 140-megawatt “power islands” uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s thermal energy in a low-profile configuration and drive conventional steam engines, the company says. It was intended to start transmitting power about mid-year but it is not yet in commercial operation, Flores said.

The project is engineered to transmit electricity to Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and prevent 437,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year when compared to a natural gas plant, according to corporate literature. It can store six hours’ worth of energy for use when there is no sunlight.

However, the Abengoa facility depends on a proposed Southern California Edison transmission project to become fully effective.

“They have an agreement to sell the power from their plant in Hinkley to PG&E, but it connects to the transmission grid on the SCE portion of the California ISO system,” said Charles Adamson, SCE’s manager of major projects. “Abengoa Mojave Solar cannot deliver all of its output to PG&E without the Coolwater-Lugo (Transmission Project).”

The California Independent System Operator manages the power-supply market and distributes electricity through high-voltage, long-distance power lines for 80 percent of the state and a small portion of Nevada. SCE’s Coolwater-Lugo project proposes to beef up existing transmission lines and electrical capacity from the Yermo area to Hesperia, where it is meeting resistance from some residents. It is still early in the permitting and approval process but is hoped to be approved for upgrade in 2016.

Abengoa Solar, with U.S. regional headquarters in Denver, also operates a similar 280-MW parabolic trough plant near Gila Bend, Arizona. Named Solana, it is the largest parabolic trough plant in the world, occupying 1,920 acres, the company says.

The Solana project received a $1.45 billion federal loan guarantee for construction, which was completed last year. It supplies power to 70,000 households through Arizona Public Service Co.

“Abengoa Solar will continue to provide clean energy, jobs and economic growth in California and the United States with both the Mojave and Solana projects,” the corporation says.

Solana created more than 2,000 construction jobs and 85 permanent jobs, Abengoa says, and Mojave Solar is creating more than 1,500 construction and permanent jobs. Corporate facilities include an operations and maintenance office in Victorville.

A spokesman for Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Denny Boyles, confirmed the facility is not yet online and that connecting to the grid is the developer’s responsibility. He added that PG&E is on track to meet and sustain the state mandate of having renewable-energy sources contribute at least a third of its electrical production portfolio by 2020 and beyond.

The Mojave Solar installation will generate about $169 million in tax revenues over its 25-year expected life, according to company projections — after its 280-MW output is fully connected to the grid.

Editor’s note: This is the first of two stories examining renewable energy plans in the High Desert. Today’s story focuses on Abengoa’s Mojave Solar facility near Hinkley. Sunday’s second part will focus on Southern California Edison’s proposed Coolwater-Lugo Transmission Project.

Imperial Irrigation District pitches Salton Sea plan

A plan to increase renewable energy production in and around the Salton Sea — and have utilities help finance the ailing lake’s ultimate restoration — was touted on Capitol Hill this week. (Photo: Omar Ornelas/The Desert Sun)

Raju Chebium
The Desert Sun

WASHINGTON – A plan to increase renewable energy production in and around the Salton Sea — and have utilities help finance the ailing lake's ultimate restoration — was touted on Capitol Hill this week.

Bruce Wilcox, a Salton Sea expert at the Imperial Irrigation District, said the agency's plan would generate about $3 billion over 30 years.

It won't be enough on its own to restore the 376-square-mile lake. But the plan, building momentum since last fall, represents a workable funding solution that has long eluded state and local officials.

Wilcox said it also gives Southern California's congressional delegation and local officials involved in the restoration more ammunition when they ask for the Obama administration's endorsement.

Since 1985, the federal government has contributed about $52 million to Salton Sea restoration, mostly for experimental projects, water-quality and salinity studies and ecosystem monitoring that experts say has helped them understand the science behind the lake's problems.

"What I think (federal officials) should be providing now is money to build things there," Wilcox said after speaking at an event organized by The Wilderness Society to highlight the need for more renewable energy projects on public lands nationwide.

"We're at a point now where we need to start a field laboratory approach – build a 1,000 acres, see how it works and adjust it accordingly," he added. "This is an attempt to get us started in small increments moving toward that bigger restoration."

U.S. Rep. Raul Ruiz said he is pushing the Obama administration to create a renewable-energy zone in the Salton Sea. That would be a preliminary step in making the IID project a reality.

In a brief interview after The Wilderness Society's event, where Ruiz was honored for his efforts to promote renewable energy projects on federal land, Ruiz said saving the Salton Sea requires widespread support.

"This is an all-hands-on-deck project," said the Palm Desert Democrat, who is a member of the House Natural Resources Committee.

"We need the federal government, state government, local government; we need private business. We need the tribes and we need the philanthropists."

State, local and federal leaders for years have debated how to save the dying Salton Sea, only to shelve the plans because of the huge costs associated with the project.

A $9 billion restoration plan unveiled by state leaders in 2007 never got an the California Legislature's endorsement or financing.

The sea's future has become a more pressing issue as time passes. A massive agriculture-to-urban water transfer scheduled for 2017 will further shrink the sea, expose potentially hazardous lake bed and cause widespread air quality and environmental woes.

The IID plan has yet to win state or federal blessings.

In an interview from California, IID General Manager Kevin Kelley said the plan does have the backing of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

The IID still awaits a response to a request to the Interior Department, made in February, to commit to allowing renewable energy projects on 80,000 acres it owns in the Salton Sea, he said.

The IID has already pledged to expand clean energy production on 120,000 acres it owns.

Much of that land is now under water, but is expected to become dry after 2017 as the Salton Sea recedes.

"I'd like to have a meaningful expression of support. I'd like a partner," Kelley said. "Getting the land commitment is a start. I'd like to add the 80,000 acres to the available inventory."

The Wilderness Society, or TWS, is backing House and Senate bills filed last year that would expand renewable energy on federal lands and use some of the money to shore up conservation efforts like in the Salton Sea.

But those measures haven't advanced and are unlikely to gain traction before the November elections.

Joshua Mantell, a government relations official at TWS, said he's optimistic Congress will pass the proposal after the election but before the end of this year.

Mojave Desert not ideal for massive solar project

Soda Mountain is a proposed solar project seen from the air on Wednesday, February 5, 2014. Several big solar and wind energy projects are moving forward on environmentally sensitive public land despite government land use planning efforts designed to focus such projects on less important habitat. (Kurt Miller)

OPINION

By CURT SAUER and J.T. REYNOLDS
The Press-Enterprise

The father of American conservation, Aldo Leopold, said, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” If so, the proposed construction of the Soda Mountain Solar project one quarter mile from the boundary of the Mojave National Preserve, our third largest national park site in the contiguous 48 states and a biologically diverse gem, is dead wrong.

The potential damage the proposed Soda Mountain Solar Project stands to inflict on Mojave National Preserve’s fragile desert ecosystem has been well-chronicled. The 4,000-acre development would block bighorn sheep from moving between nearby desert mountain ranges and preclude reestablishing a critical wildlife corridor between the South and North Soda Mountains. Migrating and resident birds, attracted by the area’s numerous seeps and springs, would likely be injured or killed if they collide with photovoltaic panels.

Unobstructed views from the Mojave National Preserve, which surveys demonstrate are one of tourists’ key reasons for visiting the California desert national parks, would be marred. Desert tortoise habitat would be bulldozed. The project’s groundwater pumping could dry up springs along Zzyzx Road that are used by bighorn sheep, as well as harm the water quantity and quality of Soda Spring, threatening the survival of the federally endangered Mohave tui chub.

As planned, the project would include a 350-megawatt solar power facility, with a solar array spanning approximately 2,000 acres of the Mojave Desert, straddling northern and southern points of Interstate 15, west of Baker. According to the project’s website, the facility would produce enough electricity to power the equivalent of 170,000 homes. However, the project proposal has not identified a buyer for the electricity and some of the transmission lines running through the area are already at maximum capacity.

However, there has been little focus on the project’s adverse impacts to the Zzyzx Desert Studies Center and the Mojave National Preserve’s environmental education programs. The Desert Studies Center is managed by California State University and is nestled in a refuge of natural desert ponds, dry lakes and foothills just to the east of the proposed project. It draws students and experts from around the world to conduct research, teach about the wonders of the Mojave Desert and experience the pristine desert environment. As former superintendents of Joshua Tree and Death Valley national parks, we are well aware of the benefits of such hands-on educational programs in building stewardship and teaching people about the value of the desert.

The Mojave National Preserve also uses this facility for environmental education programs that reach underserved schoolchildren from the Barstow area. Elementary and middle school children search for scorpions with ultraviolet lights, learn about the special adaptations of desert plants and animals, acquire knowledge about Native American cultures and gaze up in wonder at the dark, starry night skies.

Consider for a moment that if the Soda Mountain Solar Project is built, these young students will escape the urban environment of Barstow only to encounter an industrial zone next to a national park. Is this really the message we want to send to our youth, especially when better options exist?

The project harms the very resources that are the foundation and instructional basis for these programs. Soda Mountain Solar would create light, glare and thousands of acres of photovoltaic panels, marring scenic vistas and night skies. Air quality stands to be diminished by fugitive dust from construction. Drawdown of critical seeps and springs would impair the fragile desert ecosystem. The Soda Mountain Solar Project’s impact to the human dimensions of the desert ecosystem has not yet been thoroughly examined.

Aldo Leopold thought that one of our outstanding scientific discoveries was not technological, but our understanding of the complexity of the land. Leopold aptly observed, “Conservation is a state of harmony between men and land.” Far from being harmonious, the Soda Mountain Solar Project strikes a dissonant chord with those of us who have worked hard to preserve and protect special places like the Mojave National Preserve because it threatens this country’s considerable investment in our desert public lands and national parks.

We ask U.S. Bureau of Land Management Director Neil Kornze and state BLM Director Jim Kenna to relocate the project to an area that will not adversely impact our desert communities, educational programs, or ecosystems.

Curt Sauer was superintendent of Joshua Tree National Park from 2002-10 and J.T. Reynolds was superintendent of Death Valley National Park from 2001-09.

Off-roaders cry foul at renewable energy plan

Brightsource Solar Facility

Anneli Fogt
Desert Dispatch

VICTORVILLE • Off-roading enthusiast Jon Stewart was among dozens of people who showed up at a public hearing Friday to protest a plan that would fast-track renewable energy projects throughout California’s deserts.

“They’re not looking at hunting, photography, astronomy and stargazing, it’s all of these little things people want to go out and do and enjoy,” said Stewart, a member of the California Association of 4 Wheel Drive Clubs.

One of the main topics of Friday’s Off Highway Motor Vehicle Recreation Commission meeting was expected to be OHV vehicles on the Pacific Crest Trail. However, after a presentation on the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, the focus quickly shifted to the preservation of the desert and the use of public land.

The plan is a collaboration between the country, state and numerous other agencies to take 22 million acres of the desert from the Mexico border to Inyo County and use the natural resources — sun and wind — for renewable energy. The plan has been under scrutiny since in its introduction in 2012.

The tipping point of Friday’s meeting was the concern over the preservation of recreational areas. Even though the plan states that recreational areas will be preserved, many OHV proponents are wary.

“It’s a bait-and-switch tactic,” said Stewart. “They’re subdividing (OHV vehicles) into a corridor and not looking at the big picture of how people enjoy the desert.”

OHMVR commissioner Kevin Murphy said it is “alarming to think about zoning the desert” and cutting it up into areas of energy production while leaving others for those who want to photograph or enjoy recreation.

“Someone trying to appease one group to use the land for some non-public benefit is upsetting as a person that lives out here and loves the desert,” said Lancaster resident Doug Parham. “Recreation has never been controlled.”

Parham suggested putting solar panels on the roofs of the urban landscape where there is plenty of open space on the tops of buildings and parking garages.

Terry Weiner from the Desert Protective Council seconded Parham’s suggestions of urban solar but had different concerns behind her reasoning.

Weiner said the problems go beyond humans’ desire for unspoiled beauty and recreation. She said solar panels cause problems for wildlife as well. She said birds can be burned by the heat coming off of solar towers or mistake a sea of solar panels for water. She also said the land can be negatively affected by the massive amounts of construction. Weiner urged the plan to be held off until all of the studies are done about how everything will be affected.

The public draft of the plan is expected to be released in the spring or summer this year, and there will be a 90-day comment period for the public to voice its opinions.

Enviro Group Sues to Block New Desert Solar Projects Over Threat to Tortoises

Adult desert tortoise with four juveniles. (Lake Mead NRA/Flickr/Creative Commons License)

by Chris Clarke
KCET.org

The environmental activist group Defenders of Wildlife filed suit today to overturn the Interior Department's approval of two large solar projects planned for the Ivanpah Valley in the Mojave Desert south of Las Vegas, saying that the projects were approved without enough consideration of the damage they'd cause the federally Threatened desert tortoise.

The Stateline and Silver State South solar projects, which would straddle the California-Nevada line not far from the Mojave National Preserve, were approved by the Interior Department on February 19. Defenders of Wildlife had previously said it would sue Interior if the projects were approved.

According to the language in Defenders' complaint, the two projects "collectively threaten the survival of the tortoise in the Ivanpah Valley, which, in turn, poses grave risks to the survival and recovery of the entire Mojave population of the Tortoise."

The lawsuit was filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California.

The Tempe-based firm First Solar would build each of the projects with its proprietary cadmium telluride photovoltaic panels. First Solar would operate Stateline, but it sold Silver State South to the Florida firm NextEra Energy Resources in October 2013. In 2013, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimated that the two projects would displace or kill as many as 2,115 desert tortoises, many of them hatchlings and juveniles.

Defenders' suit charges that the Interior Department failed to address the cumulative impacts to the tortoise of building both of the plants, with each project's Environmental Impact Statement omitting consideration of the other plant's impact. The group further points out that USFWS issued a Biological Opinion (BiOp) approving Silver State South despite the agency's earlier urging that the plant not be built because it would effectively seal off a critical genetic connectivity corridor for the tortoise.

The group is asking the court to vacate the projects' approval by the Interior Department and send agencies back to square one in the Environmental Impact Statement process.

The Stateline project would convert 1,651 acres of tortoise habitat in California, near the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS). Silver State South would occupy 2,388 acres on the Nevada side of the valley. Together with the nearly 4,000-acre ISEGS and the already existing Silver State North project, Stateline and Silver State South would create a band of industrial development across one of the most important migration and connectivity corridors for the desert tortoise, potentially affecting the species' survival into a warming 22nd Century.

"The combined Silver State South and Stateline Solar projects are examples of the kind of renewable energy development that does not take wildlife into account, or properly plan to have the least impact possible on imperiled wildlife," wrote Defenders' Courtney Sexton in a Thursday blog post. "They are a body blow to the threatened tortoises and habitat in the region. The result will essentially be an impenetrable wall of development cutting across the heart of the Ivanpah Valley."

"We don't have to choose between protecting imperiled wildlife and encouraging clean, renewable energy," added Defenders' California director Kim Delfino. "All we have to do is plan smart from the start and move proposed projects to low-conflict areas, something the BLM and the Service failed to do when they approved the Silver State South and Stateline Solar projects in the Ivanpah Valley."

A Huge Solar Plant Opens, Facing Doubts About Its Future

A field of mirrors at the Ivanpah power plant in California. The plant took almost four years to complete and stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. (Jim Wilson/The New York Times)

By DIANE CARDWELL and MATTHEW L. WALD
New York Times

NIPTON, Calif. — The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind.

It could also be the last.

Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new projects have been coming online in recent months — many in the last quarter of 2013 — experts say fewer are beginning construction and not all of those under development will be completed.

“I don’t think that we’re going to see large-scale solar thermal plants popping up, five at a time, every year in the U.S. in the long-term — it’s just not the way it’s going to work,” said Matthew Feinstein, a senior analyst at Lux Research.

“Companies that are supplying these systems have questionable futures. There’s other prospects for renewables and for solar that look a lot better than this particular solution,” he said, including rooftop solar systems that are being installed one by one on businesses and homes.

Executives involved in Ivanpah — a venture among BrightSource Energy, NRG Energy and Google — say that once the facility proves that the technology can work, it will become easier to finance others, especially as repetition brings the cost down.

When BrightSource and other companies asked NRG to invest in a second thermal project, said David Crane, NRG’s chief, he responded: “We’ve got $300 million invested in Ivanpah — let me see that work for a few months and then we’ll decide whether we want to be involved in more.”

At the same time, BrightSource has shifted its focus, pursuing markets overseas like China, South Africa and the Middle East and designing smaller plants involving one tower rather than Ivanpah’s three.

Addressing a tent full of officials and industry executives, including those from the construction giant Bechtel, the engineering and building contractor on the project, David Ramm, BrightSource’s chief executive, acknowledged the risk at the dedication ceremony about 50 miles south of Las Vegas.

“We will have failed as a company if the last project we built was at Ivanpah,” he said. “The challenge for BrightSource going forward, and hopefully some of the partners who worked with us here, is to enable this technology commercially and in multiple locations around the world.”

It is a daunting challenge. The Ivanpah project was conceived in the early days of the Obama administration, when dreams of creating a thriving renewable energy industry were backed by the federal government’s financial support. Ivanpah received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee, without which it would not have gone forward, the developers said.

Ernest Moniz, the energy secretary, toured a tower and said the plant was an example of how the loan program — which set off a political maelstrom after the prominent failure of one of its borrowers, the solar panel maker Solyndra — was supposed to work.

“Our job is to kick-start the demonstration of these different technologies to have them available to the private sector,” he told reporters, standing on a tower platform, soaring above a dry lake bed, two huge boilers atop the other towers glowing in the distance like something out of a clean-tech version of “The Lord of the Rings.”

But he acknowledged that solar thermal technology only worked at large scale and in certain locations.

The loan program that financed Ivanpah has now ended, and the underlying economics shifted during its construction as the price of conventional solar panels dropped. It’s a familiar story in government-sponsored energy projects, going back to efforts to make gasoline from coal in the late 1970s, which were doomed by the retreat of oil prices.

And as federal support has waned, so, too, has demand for similar large-scale projects. What’s more, an important tax credit worth 30 percent of the cost is set to decline after 2016.

“There have been some big changes in both the market and policy dynamics since we made our investment that, I think, on balance, are not terribly positive for BrightSource,” said Dan Reicher, executive director of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford. Mr. Reicher oversaw an early investment in BrightSource in 2008 when he was director of climate and energy initiatives at Google. (The company went on to invest $168 million in Ivanpah.)

“Clean tech investing is way off,” he said.

Still, experts say, BrightSource’s solar thermal technology — which focuses sunlight from mirrors onto 2,200-ton boilers 339 feet in the air to make steam that drives turbines to produce electricity — may have an advantage over conventional panels, which convert sunlight directly into electricity.

The increase in renewable sources of energy, which produce intermittently, coming into the grid, has also increased the need for other services crucial to reliable operation, services that solar thermal plants could provide. Those needs include the ability to start and stop quickly, at any season or hour, when human operators give the order.

Utilities pay power plants for some of those jobs, and some conventional generating stations earn a significant income, in addition to what they receive for producing energy. Around the country, coal plants — of which there are fewer and fewer — were well suited to that work. And government regulators can simply require utilities operating on the grid to show that they have the ability to accomplish some of those jobs, which industry executives call “ancillary services.”

“In the future, there will be money to be made from technologies and systems that contribute to integrating and balancing renewables on the grid,” said Samuel Thernstrom, the executive director of the Energy Innovation Reform Project, a nonprofit in Washington that evaluates electricity policy. “That’s going to be an increasing issue as the percentage of renewables on the grid increases.”

Ivanpah could stabilize voltage but has little storage, though it does have natural gas backup. At the dedication, Mr. Ramm said that in the future, BrightSource’s boilers would use molten salt to store the heat longer. Last year, Arizona Public Service opened a solar thermal plant, Solana, that lets customers brew their morning coffee with the previous afternoon’s sunshine.

At the California Independent System Operator, the company that manages the grid on a moment-to-moment basis, Stephen Berberich, the president and chief executive, said that “on an apples-to-apples basis, it is more expensive than photovoltaic, but it has a heck of a lot more capabilities than photovoltaic does.”

Another expert, Ron Binz, an energy consultant based in Denver and the former chairman of the Colorado public service commission, said that storage would indeed be needed as intermittent renewables grew. But solar thermal plants were not the only way to meet that need, he said, and a competition would follow. “You can’t look at any element of this without looking at all the others,” he said.

As for the federal loan guarantee program, the government has already changed its approach, looking to emphasize a range of cleaner technologies, especially in fossil fuels and nuclear power.

To that end, Mr. Moniz encouraged the crowd of industry executives to pursue new projects that would qualify for the loan guarantees. “Bring them on,” he said. “We’re ready.”

Renewable energy policy enters final act

OPINION

Soda Mountains Solar project map. (BLM)

Written by David Lamfrom
Desert Sun

The renewable energy policy world is filled with government agencies, corporations, conservation groups — and a tyranny of intimidating acronyms. The California desert continues to serve as a petri dish for renewable energy development, which has produced both Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde results, thus far. The stage is set for the next phase in renewable energy planning, and we can’t afford another failed experiment.

The goal of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), shaped by the state of California, the Department of Interior and dozens of important landowners and stakeholders, is to strike balance between protecting species and spaces, while appropriately furthering renewable energy, including solar, wind and geothermal development.

The DRECP builds upon the massive Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement, (Solar PEIS), which set policy for six western states including California; created solar zones like Riverside East (the country’s largest); and, smartly, reduced the western federal lands open to solar development from 100 million acres to 20 million acres.

It also clarified where projects should be sited and supported planning to protect diverse and, in some cases, endangered species and resources. It eliminated the proposed Iron Mountain solar zone nearby to Joshua Tree National Park, which would have disconnected critical wildlife corridors between that park and protected mountain ranges north.

The DRECP process will refine the Solar PEIS, with a lens on the California desert. While the DRECP is on a larger scale, it is similar to the Coachella Valley Multiple Species Habitat Plan, in its mission to protect critical species and habitats. If approved, the DRECP will be the dominant solar energy guide for at least the next 25-40 years. In short: It’s a big deal that we all need to pay attention to.

At last count, the California desert alone has more than 1 million acres of disturbed lands or previously developed lands that may be more appropriate for solar panels and associated development. Although even on disturbed lands, thoughtful decision-making is still necessary, particularly where species and cultural conflicts lie. Protecting places that neighbor our national parks and other wildlife-rich lands that infuse billions of dollars into our local economies is of utmost importance. We urge Department of the Interior Secretary Sally Jewell to take thoughtful action on this landscape-level conservation plan.

A conservation legacy that fosters recreation and tourism has bloomed over the past 20 years in the California desert. Thoughtful planning is crucial to ensuring its longevity. The draft DRECP is expected to be released for public comment in May.

While conversations between the plan authors and many concerned parties including the National Parks Conservation Association is leading to improvements, poorly sited projects that would harm our national parks and negatively impact desert communities that financially rely on them continue to be considered.

An Eagle Crest pumped storage proposal slurps critical water, is a net energy loser and threatens Joshua Tree National Park. Bechtel’s Soda Mountain solar proposal is a quarter-mile from Mojave National Preserve. Iberdrola’s poorly sited wind and solar proposal would sit on the Old Spanish Trail, just south of Death Valley National Park. And First Solar is seeking approval for yet another poorly sited project in the now infamous Ivanpah Valley.

Dramatic negative impacts to desert tortoises and to Mojave National Preserve through projects like Ivanpah Solar gave a black eye to the renewable energy industry. The DRECP must avoid harmful projects that erode public trust and counter the plan’s purpose. Only by doing so can we ensure a future that we can all take pride in.

David Lamfrom is the senior desert program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association. Email him at dlamfrom@npca.org

Solar plant powers up, turns on desert show

BrightSource Tower surrounded by mirrors near Ivanpah Dry Lake.

By David Danelski
Orange County Register

Without fanfare, one of the biggest and most controversial solar developments in California has gone online in northeast San Bernardino County, creating a visual spectacle for travelers heading across the Nevada border on Interstate 15.

Meret Uteregges stood at the edge of the Ivanpah Valley early Wednesday afternoon and marveled at the sight below her.

Three arrays of thousands of mirrors blanket more than 5 square miles of the Mojave Desert landscape and focus sunshine on the tops of three towers, each taller than the length of a football field.

The mirror fields and the tower tops, glowing with an intensely bright white light, are proving to be a traffic stopper that dominates the landscape for miles.

“It is like science fiction,” said Uteregges, from Zurich, who stopped on the shoulder of Nipton Road, a few miles south of the solar field, to get a good look. “It is fascinating. I saw it being built a few years ago but didn't know it would be so big.”

The Ivanpah solar energy project was developed by BrightSource Energy Co. – which owns the plants, along with NRG Energy and Google – and now is operated by NRG Solar. It has been operating since the beginning of the year, according to officials with the California Energy Commission.

NRG spokesman Jeff Holland declined to provide details of the startup, saying only that the company in mid-February would publicize its electricity-production debut.

Monthly status reports available on the state Energy Commission's website said that one of the towers went into commercial operation Dec. 30. And a commission spokesman said the other two towers also have been producing power since that date.

The $2.1 billion project is expected to provide enough carbon-free electricity for 140,000 homes through contracts with Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric. It was supported with some $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees and has been hailed by President Barack Obama.

Despite the benefits of clean energy, the project drew protests from some environmental and Native American groups. Native Americans said the project disturbed sacred ground in the Ivanpah Valley.

Environmentalists objected because the development consumed 5.6 square miles of desert tortoise habitat, displacing dozens of the reptiles, which have been relocated or are confined to holding pens. Tortoises are listed as a species threatened with extinction.

BrightSource's environmental reviews predicted that about 17 of the reptiles would be displaced. But after construction started in fall 2010, about 125 were captured on the site.

To make up for the lost habitat, BrightSource funded California's acquisition of about 7,200 acres elsewhere in the Mojave Desert.

When operators started testing the towers last year, a new concern emerged: Birds that flew into the heat zones around the towers died from burns. Federal fish and wildlife officials are tracking the bird deaths and taking possession of the carcasses, according to monthly status reports filed with the Energy Commission.

Some passers-by said it makes sense to take advantage of the desert's abundant sunlight.

Mark Tworek of Calgary, Alberta, said he saw the bright solar towers as he crested a hill in Nevada while riding his motorcycle on Nipton Road, southeast of the project.

“It is pretty amazing to see it in operation,” he said, sipping a soda at the Nipton Trading Post.

“With all the sunshine around here, it is a no-brainer.”

Ivanpah Solar Project Quietly Goes Online -- Or Does It?

Ivanpah Solar Electric generating System (Photo: torroid/Flickr/Creative Commons License)

by Chris Clarke
Rewire | KCET.ORG

News reports are saying that the world's largest concentrating solar facility went online in California's desert at the beginning of the month. But figures from the state's grid operator suggest that solar thermal power production in California actually cratered for most of the month.

According to a piece by reporter David Danelski on the website of the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the 370-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System near the Mojave National Preserve went online at the beginning of January, starting to feed solar thermal power to California's grid.

Agency documents cited by Danelski do indeed reflect a startup date of December 30, 2013 for the project. But figures from the California Independent System Operator (CaISO), which operates the power grid for most of California, suggest that rather than having an immediate boost in energy entering the state's grid, production by California's concentrating solar thermal power plants actually fell nearly to nothing for most of the month.

The 377-megawatt project, designed and sponsored by BrightSource Energy and owned by BrightSource, NRG Energy, and Google, is being completed by contractor Bechtel on close to 4,000 acres of public land in the Ivanpah Valley south of Las Vegas.

But if Ivanpah has gone online, the state's figures seem not to show and increase in solar energy coming into the grid. CAISO tracks energy entering its grid from various forms of renewable energy and releases those figures in daily Renewables Watch documents. For more than a year, CaISO has been tracking photovoltaic power and solar thermal power in separate categories.

Power entering the grid from solar PV -- the same solar panels you may well have on your roof -- utterly dwarfs that coming from solar thermal plants, where steam generated by concentrated solar heat is used to turn turbines. That's because the state's operating solar thermal plants are few: there's ESolar's five-megawatt Sierra Suntower solar power tower plant outside Lancaster, and about 400 megawatts of generating capacity in less than a dozen parabolic trough facilities owned by Luz in San Bernardino County.

Those concentrating solar facilities put an average of 1,072 megawatt-hours of power into the grid each day in February 2013, to give an example of a winter day production baseline for existing plants.

CaISO doesn't break the figures down by which individual plants produce the power. But with even one of Ivanpah's three 125-megawatt power towers coming online in January, you'd expect to see an immediate jump in daily solar thermal production. Instead, January's records show that solar thermal output tanked. For some time in December 2013, the state's solar thermal output hovered around 500 megawatt-hours per day with peak daily outputs around 99 megawatts -- already significantly lower than February 2013's output.

On January 2, production jumped dramatically to 3,082 megawatt-hours, with a peak of 264 megawatts, which could be consistent with one of Ivanpah's towers firing up and putting power into the grid. But then the next day, the state's solar thermal energy production plummeted to just 40 megawatt-hours, with a peak output of just seven megawatts.

The state's solar thermal power production stayed essentially flat for almost the rest of the month, only this week approaching their December averages.

The red line shows total power production in megawatt-hours, while the blue line shows daily peak outputs in megawatts.

These figures aren't consistent with the world's largest solar thermal power plant going online. They're actually consistent with most of the state's existing solar thermal capacity going down, which happened for quite a bit last January as well. (Winter, with its shorter days and more diffuse sunlight, is a sensible time to conduct maintenance on solar thermal plants. But that's a guess on our part as to why that drop might have happened.)

ReWire has an inquiry into CaISO's public affairs office to see whether there might be some inconsistency in the figures, and they've promised to get back to us.

We also made inquiries with the California Energy Commission to see whether they might explain this apparent contradiction to us, and were referred to the January 17, compliance document cited in the Press-Enterprise. That document does include a reference to the plant's Unit 1 going online on December 30, 2013. Then again, previous compliance reports from last year have mentioned earlier online dates, which have been updated as the construction schedule slipped.

When we asked project designer BrightSource Energy's press spokesperson Jared Blanton whether he could shed any light on the issue Thursday, he replied that all questions about Ivanpah are now being handled by NRG, including the question "why is BrightSource now referring all press questions to NRG?"

NRG has not yet responded to our resulting query. Danelski reports that NRG will have a formal statement on the plant's status in February.

The tortoise and the flare: California solar power projects confront habitat impact

Around the country, developers, policymakers and environmentalists are faced with balancing the need for clean energy with protection of the existing landscape. In California's Mojave Desert is one of the world's finest solar power resources, but it's also the habitat of endangered tortoises. Gabriela Quiros of KQED reports.

Transcript

JUDY WOODRUFF: Now the challenges of combating climate change.

This week, the European Union announced it was loosening its strict environmental regulations in the face of economic setbacks. In the U.S., renewable sources of energy like wind and solar have struggled to take hold on a large scale.

As Gabriela Quiros of KQED-San Francisco reports, one major effort to harness the power of the desert sun shows promise, but has had its own effect on the land.

JOSEPH DESMOND, BrightSource Energy: What's that sort of shiny object off in the distance there over a sea of mirrors? That's the first thing you see are the towers from over the mountains, and, as you get a little closer, you begin to see a sense of the scale of how it is designed.

GABRIELA QUIROS, KQED: Three giant towers and three 300,000 mirrors have gone up in California's Mojave Desert one hour south of Las Vegas.

The $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar project is the largest of its kind in the world. It will be able to produce as much electricity as a medium-sized natural gas plant, but without the carbon emissions.

JOSEPH DESMOND: We selected the Ivanpah site because this good sun. The better the sun, the more cost-effective the energy is delivered because you can produce more.

CARL ZICHELLA, Natural Resources Defense Council: Within 200 miles or less of Los Angeles, we have one of the very finest solar resources on the planet. You know, we need to take the carbon out of the world's largest economy and do it in a very short time frame. Large-scale solar in the best locations like the desert are going to be important parts of that.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Ivanpah is one of seven new big solar plants in the state that will be finished by 2014. And solar energy from plants and rooftops will continue to grow.

California utilities are rushing to fulfill a state law that requires them to produce one-third of their electricity from renewable energy by 2020.

CARL ZICHELLA: California was among the very first states to adopt a policy that required utilities to buy a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources. Now 34 states have adopted similar policies.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Unlike the photovoltaic solar panels you find on rooftops and in some solar plants, Ivanpah uses a technology called concentrating solar thermal. Mirrors reflect sunlight and concentrate it on to boilers filled with water on top of three towers, each as tall as a 45-story building.

The taller the towers, the more mirrors fit on the field. The boiler produces high-pressure steam that powers a turbine at the base of the tower. Just as at any traditional power plant, the turbine produces electricity.

JOSEPH DESMOND: The project itself will on an annual basis serve the equivalent of about 140,000 homes.

GABRIELA QUIROS: One of the shortcomings of solar energy is that it's only available when the sun is shining. But systems in place at some solar plants similar to Ivanpah get around this by storing heat in molten salt for later use.

JOSEPH DESMOND: When you add storage you're essentially making this a power plant just like a natural gas plant, meaning it has the ability to be flexible, controllable and deliver power when it's most valued and most needed on to the grid.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Ivanpah doesn't include storage, but the first U.S. solar plant with storage started delivering electricity in 2013 in Arizona.

Despite the advantages of these large solar plants in the desert, Ivanpah ran into challenges.

ILEENE ANDERSON, Center for Biological Diversity: From the get-go, we knew that the Ivanpah project was located in an area that had fairly high density of desert tortoise in it.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Worried about habitat disruption, the Center for Biological Diversity out of Los Angeles testified against the project. But construction began in 2010.

Desert tortoises are protected under the Endangered Species Act, so the project's developer, BrightSource, based in Oakland, California, asked for a permit to move any tortoises it found on the federal land where it was building the plant.

JOSEPH DESMOND: The initial surveys did not show that there were a lot of desert tortoises.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Surveys conducted during dry years led BrightSource to believe they would find close to 30 tortoises. But the rains came, and 173 tortoises showed up instead.

JOSEPH DESMOND: We stopped construction in one area of the project. What they did is have us take a pause in the area in which they had located the additional tortoises.

GABRIELA QUIROS: The company transferred the tortoises to pens and later moved them back on to wildland; 53 additional tortoises have been born in captivity.

JOSEPH DESMOND: If you take into account the care and monitoring of all the tortoises involved in the program, it works out to be about $55,000 per tortoise.

ILEENE ANDERSON: I think, early on, it was a big rush to get projects on the ground. There hadn't been any planning. There hadn't been any large-scale evaluation of the landscape.

GABRIELA QUIROS: In response, more research is taking place and new policies are being adopted.

Biologists like Ken Nussear from the U.S. Geological Survey are trying to better understand how development might impact animals like desert tortoises.

KEN NUSSEAR, U.S. Geological Survey: Each tortoise has its own channel, and we plug that channel in.

We got tortoises up in this hillside somewhere.

GABRIELA QUIROS: The U.S. Interior Department has identified solar energy zones on public land in six Southwestern states. These 300,000 acres are close to transmission lines and have fewer threatened species.

In California, government agencies and environmental groups are working to identify large tracks in the Mojave Desert suitable for wind and solar plants. This plan would also set aside land for desert species.

ILEENE ANDERSON: We're engaged in that process and very much looking forward to help crafting a good plan that allows for renewable energy development, as well as allowing for good, strong conservation to occur.

KEN NUSSEAR: So this one here is a new burrow. And we just put an address here so we can see not only how many times does he use this same exact place, but which other tortoises are using this place.

I got a position. Here we go, 665-672.

GABRIELA QUIROS: Around the country, developers, policy-makers and environmentalists are faced with the delicate task of balancing the need for clean energy with the need to protect well-loved landscapes.

World's biggest solar plant may pave way for smaller-scale renewable future

Vast desert solar farms helping to meet energy targets but environment and wildlife campaigners raise concerns

BrightSource Energy's Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System in the Mojave Desert. (Photograph: Isaac Brekken/Washington Post)

Lenny Bernstein
Washington Post / Guardian Weekly

Tower One glows so bright against the blue sky that even at mid-afternoon in the Mojave Desert it would be easy to conclude it is designed to illuminate the valley floor below.

In fact, hundreds of thousands of glittering mirrors, carefully arranged across a swath of desert, reflect sunlight on to the tower and two others like it, heating them to 538C and causing the glow. Water in pipes atop the towers turns to steam. The steam spins turbines to generate electricity.

The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System will send that power across California, the Golden State, early this year, becoming the largest solar plant in the world to concentrate the sun's rays to produce electricity. Such utility-sized solar plants are beginning to appear across the US, with 232 under construction, in testing or granted permits, many in the south-west and California, says the Edison Electric Institute, which represents utilities. The scale of the largest plants is difficult to imagine in the eastern part of the country, where a relative lack of available open land and unobstructed sunlight have limited solar facilities to perhaps a tenth the size of the West's plants. In the west, ample sun, wide-open spaces, financial incentives, falling costs and state mandates have made big solar plants possible.

"Right now you're seeing the gold rush of renewable [energy] projects coming on line," said Fong Wan, senior vice-president for energy procurement at Pacific Gas and Electric, the big northern California utility that has bought about two-thirds of the electricity the Ivanpah plant will produce.

But even as the largest plants are helping utilities meet state requirements for renewable energy, the appetite for them may be waning, say experts. The next phase of solar development – especially in the east – may feature smaller projects located closer to cities. Environmental groups want regulators to look at sites such as landfills and industrial zones before allowing construction in largely undisturbed environments such as deserts.

"Part of the beauty is that solar is scalable, literally from the back of a cellphone all the way to a million panels in the desert," said Rhone Resch, president and chief executive officer of the Solar Energy Industries Association. "The market is still trying to determine what is the optimal size." The very largest plants, like BrightSource Energy's $2.5bn Ivanpah system and the Topaz Solar Farm, which will produce current with 9m photovoltaic panels, can generate as much electricity as a coal- or natural-gas-fired power plant.

But there is still a long way to go. In 2012, coal and natural gas plants produced 37 % and 30% of US electricity, respectively, according to the US Energy Information Administration, while wind generated 3.5% and solar just 0.1%.

And the road to big solar energy's development has been difficult. Lawsuits against the large plants accuse developers and the federal government of spoiling the fragile desert environment and the habitats of wildlife there. On 13 December, the California energy commission tentatively refused to permit another BrightSource project because of its concerns that super-heated plumes of air from the towers and mirrors might harm birds. A small number of singed dead birds have turned up at Ivanpah, according to media reports.

Ivanpah is a "concentrating solar" thermal plant. The better-known variety – like the flat solar panels on homes – convert sunlight directly into electricity via photovoltaic cells. The price of those panels has dropped so low that those plants are much cheaper to build than facilities that use the sun's heat to turn water to steam. Thermal plants like Ivanpah have advantages – they are more reliable – but their futures may depend on finding some way to store heat so power is available whenever needed.

"The benefit of a thermal solar plant like Ivanpah is it's not subject to the wild swings in production that a [photovoltaic] plant is," said Randy Hickok, senior vice-president of NRG Solar, which holds a majority stake in the project. Another major investor is Google.

Environmental groups, for their part, have sometimes found themselves in the awkward position of choosing between their dual goals of protecting desert species and promoting clean, renewable energy.

The powerful Sierra Club, for example, chose not to side with other, smaller groups that sued the interior department and its bureau of land management to block Ivanpah over the damage they said it would do to the threatened desert tortoise's habitat on federal land. The Sierra Club was not happy about Ivanpah's impact, but it took no position, said Bruce Nilles, director of its Beyond Coal campaign.

"I think they were very misguided," said Michael Connor, California director of the Western Watersheds Project, which lost a bid to halt Ivanpah in federal court but has appealed the decision. "It's all about 'we've got to do something, we've got to get something going here' .. instead of working out strategies [and] alternatives." Ivanpah is undergoing testing, its three 46-storey towers rising out of the vast desert like Bugsy Siegel's Flamingo Hotel in nearby Las Vegas did almost 70 years ago. Motorists regularly pull off interstate 15 at the California-Nevada border to get a better look at the arrays of mirrors on 1,416 hectares around the three towers, and to ask: what exactly is going on here?

The boom was set in motion in 2002, when California told its big electric utilities they would have to generate 20% of the state's electricity from renewable sources such as sun and wind by 2010. In 2011, the state toughened its "renewable portfolio standard" to 33% by 2020. (Thirty states, including Maryland, and the District of Columbia have adopted such requirements. Virginia is among a handful of states that have set "goals" for the use of renewable energy.)

Companies began proposing to build large plants, many of them on federal land in California's sparsely populated deserts. In 2008 they were aided by the eight-year extension of a federal investment tax credit available for renewable energy projects and later by energy department loan guarantees and incentives in the federal economic stimulus package. BrightSource received a $1.6bn loan guarantee that was critical to the project, according to Joseph Desmond, senior vice-president for marketing.

The result is the growth in solar power that is plainly visible in parts of the state as well as in Arizona, Nevada and elsewhere. Pacific Gas and Electric, for example, will provide about 11% of its power from solar by 2020, up from zero a decade earlier, Wan said.

In the early days of the rush, the Bureau of Land Management reviewed plant proposals on an ad hoc basis as developers brought them forward. That resulted in some siting decisions, including Ivanpah's, that environmentalists and conservationists have criticised. In 2012, the agency created 17 solar zones covering 115,000 hectares of federal land in six south-western states, an attempt to steer projects toward areas where environmental review showed the least damage would be done. There are now 19 zones and more than 121,000 hectares of federal land in the programme, according to BLM officials.

"We are in a lot better place," said the Sierra Club's Nilles. "There's a more orderly process in place."

At the Ivanpah plant, an initial survey showed that construction would displace only a small number of desert tortoises, but as work began it became clear that many more were living there. The company has spent $56m to build fences and raise tortoises in its "Head Start" pen, where 55 have been born in captivity and will be fitted with devices that allow biologists to follow them when they are returned to the desert. Though two hatchlings were lost to fire ants, Desmond said that the ancient species' survival rate is much higher under BrightSource's care than it is in the wild. Responded Connor: "That's like arguing it's OK to pave the desert over because we can move all the animals to a zoo."

To mitigate its impact, Ivanpah's owners spent $11.4m to purchase and manage 2,800 hectares of habitat for tortoises and other wildlife in other parts of the state.

There is little argument that the project has brought advanced technology to an area of rock and scrub that is home to a golf course, three casinos, some fast-food restaurants and a few stores. Computers guide 173,500 sets of paired mirrors, or "heliostats", so they can follow the sun for as long as possible each day and generate the maximum amount of heat on the boiler tubes. Eventually, Ivanpah will supply electricity to 140,000 homes.

Robotic devices, controlled by a single person, traverse the rows of heliostats, cleaning the mirrors every couple of months, usually at night, Desmond said. BrightSource, which created the machines, won't show them publicly.

The plant uses air to cool the water that flows through the boiler tubes. As a result, Desmond said, Ivanpah's annual water use is the same as just two holes of the nearby golf course.

This article appeared in Guardian Weekly, which incorporates material from the Washington Post

New Desert Protection Act Coming

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Commentary

by Sen. Dianne Feinstein
SCV News.com

As America’s environmental innovator, California demonstrates that conserving natural resources and developing clean energy sources can coexist.

That is the reason California set the goal of generating 33 percent of its electricity by 2020 from renewable resources such as wind and solar energy. It is also the reason Los Angeles committed to phasing out coal-fired electrical power over the next 12 years.

That kind of forward thinking should extend into other areas, including how we use California’s deserts for energy development.

There is strong support in California to protect pristine desert areas. There is also strong support for the responsible development of renewable energy projects.

I believe those two goals can exist side-by-side by focusing energy development on suitable sites such as military bases and disturbed private land while protecting unspoiled desert landscapes.

The Mojave Desert is home to majestic mountains and spectacular valleys, towering sand dunes and stunning oases, all of which provide habitat for diverse plants and wildlife.

These beautiful vistas are home to remarkable archaeology, beauty and wildlife. One can find some of the last remaining dinosaur tracks, Native American petroglyphs, abundant spring wildflowers and threatened species including the bighorn sheep and the desert tortoise, which can live to be 100 years old.

But the western edge of the Mojave — 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles — is also home to Edwards Air Force Base and other developed lands.

In 2009, I learned the Bureau of Land Management was accepting applications to build solar and wind projects on federal land throughout the Mojave Desert, including pristine lands donated for conservation purposes in the East Mojave. I acted quickly to prevent this type of development, introducing legislation to establish the Mojave Trails National Monument in the eastern Mojave.

But I also obtained federal funding to study the feasibility of generating renewable energy on military installations in California’s deserts in a manner consistent with both environmental protection and the military mission.

The study, conducted by the Department of Defense and released in January 2012, concluded: “Over 7,000 megawatts of solar energy development is technically feasible and financially viable at several Department of Defense installations in the Mojave and Colorado Deserts of California.”

The report found that “Edwards Air Force Base had the highest solar potential of the military installations studied.” Of the 7,164 megawatts of potential solar capacity at military installations in the California deserts, the base accounts for 3,488 megawatts (49 percent) of the total. Of 125,507 economically viable acres for solar photovoltaic ground development, the base contains 92,009 acres (73 percent of the total).

I will soon introduce a new California Desert Protection Act to address the many competing land use demands in the desert, including conservation, recreation and military training. A central piece of the legislation will protect 266,000 acres of land donated or acquired with federal conservation funds by creating the Mojave Trails National Monument.

I have worked with members of the energy industry in the past to develop this legislation in a way that addresses their concerns and look forward to receiving their support for this bill.

It is possible to preserve our natural environment while producing environmentally-friendly energy. The next generation of Californians will thank us for it.

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., is the author of the 1994 California Desert Protection Act.

Imperial Valley's pact could help save the Salton Sea

Members of the Imperial Irrigation District board of directors, the Imperial County board of supervisors, and other officials commemorate the signing of memorandum of understanding at Red Hill Marina on Oct 24 at the Salton Sea. ( Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)

Opinion

Written by The Editorial Board
Desert Sun

The pledge by three Imperial County entities to develop renewable energy projects to generate money for the restoration of the Salton Sea could be a big step. Progress is long overdue in a decades-long debate that has been incredibly frustrating for those of us who see the future of the shrinking sea as the region’s largest pending threat to public health and the environment.

Finally, the Imperial Irrigation District (IID), Imperial County and the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District are on the same page. Representatives last week signed a memorandum of understanding to work together on geothermal and other renewable energy projects, and to work with the state to build transmission lines to bring that power to California’s grid.

A preliminary IID study estimates these projects could generate $3 billion in revenue for restoration projects. That’s three times higher than an earlier estimate and the most significant potential investment we’ve seen yet.

With the closure of the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, there is a strong need for new sources of power in Southern California. It could be a huge opportunity.

As promising as it may sound, we’re skeptical. Power plants like this take huge capital investments and years to make it through the regulatory process. Even with the state’s mandate of generating at least a third of its power from renewable sources by 2020, the energy market is hard to predict.

Utilities are looking for the cheapest sources of energy available, as they should on behalf of their customers.

If the fracking program approved by the Legislature this year generates the mother lode of natural gas that has been predicted, building transmission lines to reach the remote southern end of the Salton Sea might not be the top priority.

The Quantification Settlement Agreement, the nation’s largest agriculture-to-urban water transfer from Imperial County to San Diego County, takes full effect at the end of 2017. At that point, mitigation flows will cease, which could expose more of the lake bed, allowing fine dust to become airborne in the desert wind and create a health hazard. There is a sense of urgency.

Whether the renewable project can come online and generate a revenue stream within the next four years is a big question.

Assemblyman V. Manuel Pérez’s determination is admirable. He is cosponsoring Senate Bill 760 with Sen. Rod Wright, a Democrat from Inglewood, which would elevate geothermal power in the state’s energy procurement process.

Another bill, AB 177, would direct retail sellers of electricity to adopt long-term strategies to reach even loftier goals for renewable energy — more than half the state’s power by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

Both bills are pending until the Legislature reconvenes in January.

Tapping into the sea’s vast potential of geothermal energy also fits with the new commitment to reduce greenhouse gases made by Gov. Jerry Brown, who signed a climate change pact Monday with the governors of Oregon and Washington and the environmental minister of British Columbia.

It is good that the Imperial County power brokers are now united in their Salton Sea strategy. That wasn’t always the case, Pérez said.

“That made it difficult, quite frankly, for folks like myself at the state level to advocate on behalf of our locals here,” he said.

Kevin Kelley, IID’s general manager, said he hopes this show of unity will push state legislators to finally address the plan that was devised by state water officials in 2007 but never voted on.

When lawmakers gather in two months in Sacramento, they should debate serious and swift solutions for the Salton Sea. The folks who live around the sea are committed. They have an aggressive plan of action, although it might be overly ambitious. We may not be able to wait for the geothermal genie to rise up and save us.