World's Largest Solar Plant Nears Approval in California Desert
It's not for nothing the U.S. Southwest is called the "Saudi Arabia of solar energy." The vast deserts of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado and Utah have some of the highest solar radiation levels in the world, not to mention wide-open tracks of federally-owned land just asking for development. It should be a second coming of the gold rush, right?
In reality, turning that solar potential into a solar reality has been slower than many clean energy advocates would hope. That's a good thing to some extent: Environmental groups don't want to see vast panel arrays erected in the middle of the endangered desert tortoise's desert brush turf (or the endangered giant kangaroo rat's, for that matter). And regardless of what environmentalists want, for years a huge solar application backlog built up and languished in the Bush administration's public lands bureau, which could only see through its oil-and-gas tunnel.
Two years ago, Team Obama promised to change this raw deal. Stimulus dollars in hand, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar came to work with environmentalists to fast-track approval for dozens of ambitious solar projects and demarcate pre-approved renewable energy "zones."
This month, we are finally beginning to see the fruition of this paperwork frenzy.
The biggest example of that was just reported this week. Scott Streater of Greenwire tells us that federal regulators are in the final stages of approving what would be the largest solar power plant in the world. Located in southeast California, the 1,000 megawatt Blythe Solar Power Project would power some 800,000 homes at a cost of $6 billion. When it's finished in six years, this project alone would nearly double the nation's current solar capacity and generate three-times more electricity than the next largest solar plant today.
Other plants will also follow in the Blythe projects wake. As the article reports, in the month of August alone the Interior Department has or expects to put out the final environmental impact reports for the Blythe solar project and six others in California as it rushes towards final approval before a deadline for using stimulus dollar expires at the end of 2010.
The environmental impact of the Blythe solar thermal project is pretty decent but it's not zero. The developers are buying up and protecting other desert land in exchange for their project's vast footprint, which covers 7,000 acres of Sonoron scrub used as golden eagle foraging ground. Still, some conservation and wildlife groups have remaining concerns about a portion of the Blythe project that will overtake the ephemeral desert washes" that supply mountain water to the Colorado River. They recommend the project be down-scaled (pdf).
I want to agree, because these conservation groups, including The Wilderness Society and the Natural Resources Defense Council, are the experts, and I generally trust them in other matters. But I also know that climate change poses the biggest threat of all to wildlife and to the Colorado River. That's not to say we can't do Big Solar and still do it responsibly. But there is something to be said for the idea of Big Solar to begin with. We need to support a renewable energy industry that can go head-to-head against Big Oil and Big Coal. "World's largest" is an inspiring place to be, and if we truly want the Southwest to be the world's solar capital, we have to think big.
Photo credit: Shayan via Flickr
Jess Leber
is a Change.org editor. She most recently covered climate and energy issues as a reporter in Washington, D.C
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