Mojave Desert Blog

The Sierra Club asked the California Energy Commission (CEC) to halt its review of K Road Sun's revised proposal to build the Calico Solar power project, but the CEC dismissed the Club's challenge.  The project will destroy nearly 7 square miles of pristine desert on public land, and displace or kill many rare plant and wildlife species.  As I mentioned in a previous post , the CEC permitted the Calico Solar power project under a different owner last year, even though that company did not even have the financial or technical ability to build the project.  The new company, K Road Sun, is also of dubious pedigree, and is rushing the CEC for approval so that it can receive loans and grants from the taxpayer.   The Sierra Club told the The Sun newspaper: "The Sierra Club is very much in favor of renewable energy but this is a bad location ...," adding that the area is "important habitat for the desert tortoise and the big horn sheep." The Sierra Club is no

Two separate reports from the Nature Conservancy and the Renewable Energy Action Team indicate that the Ivanpah Valley is important to the ecological health of the Mojave Desert, suggesting the area is not suitable for destructive solar facilities.   The Ivanpah Valley is currently the focus of concerned citizens since at least three massive solar facilities could destroy over 20 square miles of pristine desert in the area, and displace or kill hundreds of endangered desert tortoises.  Many argue that rooftop solar installations--not remote facilities on public land--should be the centerpiece of renewable energy policy. Solar facilities targeting the Ivanpah Valley: Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System: Under construction by BrightSource Energy LLC, NRG, and Bechtel, with financing from Google. (5.6 square miles) Stateline Solar power project: Proposed by First Solar LLC (3.4 square miles) Silver State North and South: Proposed by First Solar LLC. BLM approved a portion of the

I wrote about the efforts to designate critical habitat for the Lane Mountain Milkvetch ( Astragalus jaegerianus ) in an earlier blog post .  In a success due largely to the efforts of the Center for Biological Diversity , the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed its final ruling last month declaring over 14,000 acres as protected land for the rare plant. Lane Mountain milk-vetch flowering in the Mojave Desert. (Credit: Cynthia Hopkins, USFWS) The primary opponents of the critical habitat designation were some off-highway vehicle (OHV) users who complained that the new protected status would deprive them of recreational activities.   However, thousands of miles of open routes remain available to OHV users on public land, in addition to the El Mirage, Stoddard Wells, and Johnson Valley Off-highway vehicle areas.

Bechtel, one of the investors in BrightSource Energy LLC's Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System, released photos of the project construction.  Remember, the photographs so far only show about a fraction of the total proposed project since phases 2 and 3 were halted by the Bureau of Land Management since the project's impact on the endangered desert tortoise are much higher than expected.  A revised biological assessment indicates that as many as 162 adult tortoises may be displaced or killed, and hundreds of smaller juvenile tortoises could be killed. This photo was obtained by GreentechSolar from Becthel's website : Photo from Becthel and BrightSource Ivanpah website. Photo shows just a fraction of Phase 1.  Less than one-third of the total destruction this project will cause. Becthel is partnering with BrightSource and energy firm "NRG" to build the Ivanpah Solar site.  Ironically, Bechtel was also a partner in the construction of the Hoover Dam, wh

Following up on a previous post regarding Google's plans to invest millions of dollars in a massive field of wind turbines in the western Mojave Desert, the Los Angeles Times ran a great article today on the dangers of poorly sited wind energy facilities on birds. Google's wind energy projects is one of several proposed for the Mojave Desert, and are expected to have similar impacts as the Altamont Pass project featured in the LA Times article.   A video accompanied the article and is also embedded below.

We all know what happened when Wall Street and Washington both looked the other way in the name of corporate profit as banks and insurers inflated housing prices, and encouraged unstable investments.  But will Americans be stuck with the cost of another over-hyped investment? The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has smoothed the way to permit hundreds of square miles of solar energy facilities on public land in America's southwestern deserts.   In California alone there were 20 solar applications in line for public land, totaling over 200 square miles.  The Obama administration asked the BLM to work with the Department of Energy (DOE) to decide which projects can receive taxpayer-backed financing and grants.  Massive solar projects have already been approved for over 4 billion dollars in government loans , and millions of dollars in cash grants . A subsidiary of energy firm " NRG " was awarded over 18 million dollars in grants (free cash), and 2.1 billion dollars of tax

A lizard keeps an eye on the blogger as it bathes in the sun in Grand Canyon National Park.

...Unless you are a solar company.  A quote by the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) land program in USA Today does not sound like it came from a conservation organization. "There's no free lunch when it comes to meeting our energy needs," she said. "To get energy, we need to do things that will have impacts." She was encouraging fellow environmentalists not to worry about the negative impacts of the Obama administration's renewable energy policy, which will destroy thousands of square miles of wildlands.  I'm sure coal and oil executives have used the same "no free lunch" argument about offshore drilling, mountaintop removal mining, and drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Yes.  Everything we do will have impacts.  But aren't we supposed to try to minimize those impacts? Isn't that what "environmental organizations have been saying for decades? I would have expected a more sophisticated s