Solar-power plants and wildlife compete in desert
CHUCKWALLA VALLEY, California: Just after noon on a 110- degree summer day, the 5.6- square-mile Desert Sunlight Solar Farm - the biggest of its kind erected on US federal land - is proving why this desolate spot is such a good one for harnessing the sun’s rays.
With few clouds above, the seemingly endless eight-millionpanel array is churning out enough electricity to power 160,000 homes some 175 miles west of here in Los Angeles.
“This is fairly typical, that as the sun moves through the sky, this is about the time of day that we hit that sort of number,” said Steve Stengel, a spokesman for the plant’s co- owner, NextEra Energy Resources.
Giant solar arrays such as Desert Sunlight not only generate vast amounts of power, but they also do not require any fuel or produce any carbon emissions - advancing the ambitious climate goals of California and the United States alike.
But lately, those lofty goals have run into a more earthly reality: Large- scale solar projects require vast amounts of land, land that also is home to many animal and plant species, most iconic among them a slowmoving herbivore called the desert tortoise.
The creature is so highly regarded by the conservation community, and so threatened by climate change, that groups that might otherwise regard themselves as allies of clean energy find themselves at odds with the solar industry. The two sides are squaring off on a US Bureau of Land Management plan to allocate some 10 million acres of public land in the California desert for conservation, recreation and clean- energy installations like the 550-megawatt, or million watt, Desert Sunlight.
The solar lobby argues that the current draft plan would throttle the industry’s expansion, making it difficult to meet the nation’s renewable- energy goals. Environmentalists want to preserve “connectivity” between areas of vital species habitat so that tortoises and other animals can move around and adjust to warming conditions, which could drive them to higher, cooler elevations. For the animals, reaching distant mountain ranges might mean crossing flat stretches where, otherwise, companies might put solar installations.
The resulting proposal would allocate 388,000 acres of federal land for renewable- energy development, while protecting 5.3 million acres for conservation reasons and 3.8 million acres for recreation. ( The last two involve some overlap). “Over twice the amount of important desert tortoise lands” would be protected under the plan, the agency determined.
“Why the administration would on one hand call for greater use of renewable energy on public lands as a way to hit carbon-reduction targets while cutting off access to the land needed ... is lost on us,” said Dan Whitten, vice president for communications at the Solar Energy Industries Association, the main trade group of the booming solar industry.
The industry’s stance on the initiative - dubbed the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan - has in turn triggered criticism in the conservation world and spurred a counter mobil is at ion in the plan’s favour.
“We’ve been at this for eight years. The industry has been at the table, and to have these issues come up ... at the 11th hour seems a bit not only mystifying but disingenuous on their part for not bringing them up earlier,” said Ileene Anderson, a senior scientist with the Centre for Biological Diversity, one of a number of prominent environmental groups backing the plan. What’s behind it all is a desert that, far from being deserted, is in high demand - presenting a complex patchwork of urban areas, national parks and monuments, military bases, lands of major cultural significance to Native Americans, and more.
The Bureau of Land Management ( BLM), a branch of the Interior Department, has been charged with managing 10 million publicly owned acres of this landscape since 1976, a period that coincided with a steady decline in the population of the tortoise, a long-lived and slow-reproducing reptile that digs telltale burrows in the dry earth to keep cool.
The tortoise is threatened by roads, off-road vehicles and more - including a changing climate. It is considered an “umbrella” species because its habitat overlaps with so many others. “By protecting the tortoise, you protect all the other species in the desert,” said Mark Massar, a wildlife biologist with the BLM.
Concern for the tortoise mounted as the desert solar boom hit in the late 2000s, buoyed by President Obama’s economic stimulus act and California’s ever-more-ambitious targets for renewable energy, which currently require power companies to get 50 per cent of their electricity from clean sources by 2030.
The conflicts were epitomised by the Ivanpah solar plant in the Mojave Desert. One environmental group, the Western Watersheds Project, sued the federal government in 2011 to stop the project. That didn’t happen, but developers ultimately had to spend millions of dollars to protect desert tortoises at and around the site.
It is in this context that the BLM began a protracted process to apportion the land, collaborating with federal and California partner agencies.
For renewable energy, one of the largest designated areas lies in east Riverside County, California, halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix along Interstate 10.
The region, called the Chuckwalla Valley, is part of a dry and harsh landscape that once supported massive World War II training exercises overseen by Army Gen. George S. Patton, who was preparing an Allied invasion force to go into North Africa.
One advantage of this valley is that it contains many hot, low-lying areas that are lessdesirable habitat for tortoises, which prefer higher elevations. Even conservationists say they are OK - mostly - with solar installations out here.
“This is a pretty decent area to be what you might call a sacrifice area for solar,” Joan Taylor, a longtime desert conservation advocate who chairs the Sierra Club’s California/Nevada Desert Committee, said as she surveyed Desert Sunlight recently. — WPBloomberg
Why the administration would on one hand call for greater use of renewable energy on public lands as a way to hit carbon-reduction targets while cutting off access to the land needed ... is lost on us. Dan Whitten, vice president for communications at the Solar Energy Industries Association