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Loading...Destroying The Mojave Desert: The Dark Side Of Solar Power
The face of the Mojave Desert, an arid region comprising more than 25,000 square miles of southeastern California and portions of Nevada, Arizona and Utah, is changing. As a frequent visitor to this desert, I am concerned.
From The Los Angeles Times:
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.
Six square miles of gleaming reflectors?
$2-Billion Solar Energy Plant
BrightSource Energy, based on Oakland, CA, is creating a solar power project at Ivanpah Valley, CA, and it will change the environment for miles around. The facility will soon be a humming city with 24-hour lighting, a wastewater processing facility and a gas-fired power plant.
The $2-billion plant will contain computers that 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 will drive an array of turbines capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.
The Trade-Off
That sounds great, but what about the surrounding land?
To make room, BrightSource has mowed down a swath of desert plants, displaced dozens of animal species and relocated scores of imperiled desert tortoises, a move that some experts say could kill up to a third of them.
This is a dilemma with no clear answers, just compromises.
The public got its chance to comment at scores of open houses, but the real political horse trading took place in meetings involving solar developers, federal regulators and leaders of some of the nation’s top environmental organizations.
From The Los Angeles Times:
“I have spent my entire career thinking of myself as an advocate on behalf of public lands and acting for their protection,” said Johanna Wald, a veteran environmental attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. “I am now helping facilitate an activity on public lands that will have very significant environmental impacts. We are doing it because of the threat of climate change. It’s not an accommodation; it’s a change I had to make to respond to climate.”
Industrial-scale solar development is well underway in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished 21 million acres for solar power, more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration over the last decade.
Read more: brightsource energy, environment, mojave desert, mojave national preserve, national park service, renewable energy, solar panels, solar power
Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may
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193 comments
+ add your ownI second Cheryl B. It's a DESERT ! Licensed Tortoise Wranglers move the tortoises, and they can migrate back under the solar panels after construction.
In the desert, water is life. Solar panels provide shade and reduce evaporation. You'll see a boom in the variety of life underneath the solar panels after a few years.
Besides, should we allow the extinction of the Human Race to save the desert tortoises?
Fukashima is a radioactive time bomb and there are fools that want to build MORE nuclear plants. Coal fired power plants pump out global warming gasses and build up mountains of coal ash... and let's not forget the radioactivity released by burning coal.
And you seriously want to complain about building solar power plants in the da###d desert?
"such a costly source of energy "
That's IT. You have NO conception of the word "costly".
You are obviously nuts.
Portland. I like your idea that perhaps the solar panels may humidify the area so that there might be side benefits such as water for lawns, golf courses and swimming pools. But I think that" part of the problem. There is no more water on the planet. It just changes form. So while some of us insist on using more (for our swimming pool, lawn, golf course, producing bottled water, washing machines and car washes, others will have to do with less. The problem is compounded by tapping for natural gas, tracking and other industrial uses which pollute and contaminate our existing water supplies and natural environment in our ever increasing use of fossil fuels.
Incidentally, Japanese authorities have announced that its wrecked nuclear plant will be unsafe for workers for the next forty years. Imagine if one lived nearby.
The Mojave is a natural desert and has an extremely active ecosystem that has already been badly damaged by the extermination of the Coastal Texas Cane forests and the Central Texas mixed woodlands (that used to push water into the central 4 corners region)
That still does not make the few acres that are used as environmentally disastrous as even a small portion of Fossil Fuels
@ Karen L Have you considered that having fewer children might be a less destructive and “a better alternative to digging, fracking or shipping oil....not to mention wars that have spent so many lives for oil!”
I certainly agree with those that say there should be more private homes and businesses to host these panels rather than sticking them all out in the desert. But even the huge panels are a better alternative to digging, fracking or shipping oil....not to mention wars that have spent so many lives for oil!
can't they find an empty area...you would think there are plenty in the desert
Industrial scale anything can be a problem. In my opinion solar is the best answer to our growing energy needs - plus conservation of course. But individual solar energy gathering on individual buildings and homes are the best answer. Senator Bernie Sanders (I) from Vermont has offered a bill that would encourage solar hot water heating on homes across America. Perhaps in the future there will be a better solar plan for large energy production but this project seems like it covers an awful lot of acreage in order to provide energy to 140,000 homes.
I pannelli solari dovrebbero essere solo posti sui tetti di case e fabbricati. Per terra non dovrebbero essere messi MAI.
To Rick G. Thank you for shedding some light on this desert situation. It really doesn't look like they "mowed a swath" of anything. You can go out into the deserts in some areas and see nothing but sage brush forever.
People need power that does not add to global warming. You can't have it both ways.
Damn it! These projects don't have to be done in such "all or nothing" ways! Don't just throw money at these projects, add some common sense laws and regulations.
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