Solar Power on Wildlands: Hard Decisions Are Needed

Editor's Note: The images and words of two desert advocates opposed the building of a solar power plant on undisturbed desert lands in Ivanpah Valley, California, recently set off a firestorm of email among desert environmentalists. The text below is a response from Carl Zichella, Western Renewable Projects Director for the Sierra Club in Sacramento. Zichella's words, in turn, set off more debate, including a potent response from Arizona State Representative and desert ecologist Daniel R. Patterson. Bottom line: There's a lot more to developing large-scale solar plants than meets the eye.

Friends: Beautiful photos; thanks for sending them. A quick Q: with scientists saying a one degree increase in temperature could lead to a 20 percent decline in species in the desert southwest (as I was reminded by a desert biologist last week), how many springs like this year's do you think the entire desert has left?

The prospect is for a four degree Celsius increase -- if we're lucky -- by the end of the century. We may not live to see the collapse, but it is coming. Future generations will pay our bill. We can reduce the impact. Shouldn't we try? Aren't we obligated to do so, knowing what we know about climate change?

This project is not yet approved and may not be approved. But we do need projects of this size if we are going to replace and block coal plants. The clock on desert conservation, mountain conservation, ocean conservation, etc. is running out. Will you oppose all sites for renewable development? Development needs to go in the least sensitive places we can find, but we do need to build them.

Maybe Ivanpah succeeds in getting approved, maybe it doesn't. It will have a steep mitigation burden if it does. It would also replace the need for a natural gas plant or part of a coal plant elsewhere. We need to consider the bigger picture in all that we do. We don't save anything by blocking all renewable projects. We just accelerate the biological decline of all California (and the world's) ecosystems.

These pictures remind me of what's at stake, both in the decisions we make today and in the longer term in which our descendants may be forced to live in a greatly diminished natural world. These are difficult decisions and they are for better or worse ours to make.

The Sierra Club did not choose the Ivanpah site and has intervened in the CEC (California Energy Commission) license proceeding to ensure that if the project goes forward it will be properly mitigated. We have not opposed it. We have not officially supported it either.

It may be that mitigation costs prevent its development, but even if not, it will certainly show others that such sites are much more expensive to develop and drive them toward less sensitive places. That's a good thing. The profit margins on these projects are not very fat.

We are in fact working to free up those lands in California City (and others like it near Victorville and elsewhere). There are lands there that were subdivided and sold off in the 1950s and which have hundreds of owners I am particularly interested in. The ag (agricultural) land is high on our interest list. Some projects are already proposed for them. In fact these were among our highest ranked RETI [Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative] zones because they were so disturbed.

There are Williamson Act (ag land preservation law in California) issues on some of these lands though and that complicates things. These areas should be developed first if possible because they are closer to load and on such beat up lands. I have discussed a range of incentives with both state and federal representatives to open up these areas. Bright Source is interested in helping solve some of these problems and is working with us to sort them out as are other companies. It is my hope we can make more of these disturbed lands available ASAP.

Many projects are seeking to take advantage of the stimulus money, or have financing arrangements that could expire. That makes them less likely to bail out of projects they already have in development, though as I noted earlier, they have no guarantee of making it to the finish line.

Finally, we have looked at every recommendation for disturbed lands and continue to do so. We are working with new data (The Nature Conservancy) has produced, are working with the CEC on the CA. Governor's executive order, and are working to move (the federal Bureau of Land Management) in a direction in which they will proactively identify their most disturbed lands and begin rejecting right-of way applications on sensitive lands, something they had previously refused to do.

One last consideration is that valuable cultural resources have been found on sites we originally considered disturbed and good development sites. Nothing has been obvious or easy.

Article posted on May 18, 2009

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The views expressed are the author's alone and do not represent the official position of the Discovery Channel.