Mojave Desert Blog

Chris Clarke at Coyote Crossing recently published a great piece on KCET looking at what we will lose when the majestic Carrizo Plain is industrialized for the sake of large-scale renewable energy projects.  While writing the piece he came across a passionate letter written by long-time public servant and friend of the environment Peter Douglas, who recently retired from the California Coastal Commission.  Mr. Douglas wrote the letter urging policymakers to reconsider plans to build massive solar power projects in Carrizo Plain, which will threaten endangered species in an area called "California's Serengeti".  You can read the full letter on the Carrizo Commons website , but I've included some particularly inspiring excerpts below. I sense in pockets of our political, economic and civic world of leaders, a need to be seen as progressive facilitators and not as obstructionists in the way of new centralized industrial development of renewable energy.  This is a

I posted in July about hundreds of square-miles of wind and solar projects that threaten to transform Southern California's deserts and mountains into a giant industrial zone.  Included in that was a BLM map showing those project locations, but I felt that map was missing the landscapes and lifestyles that will actually be impacted by the proposed projects.  I put together my own version of that BLM map, which depicts the same projects and impacts, but with Google Earth you can see the mountains and valleys that will be interrupted by towering wind turbines and the tarps of steel and glass we call renewable energy.  My map does not pretend to follow exact boundaries, but each project is roughly the size depicted on the BLM map.  Wildlife, travelers, naturalists, tourists, hikers, campers, and rock hounds wont notice a 20 meter difference in the boundary when a project is several miles across.  The result is a sick sort of art, showing the planned destruction of " God's

Film maker Robert Lundahl captures Native American concerns regarding the destruction of sacred sites during the initial construction of Solar Millennium's Blythe solar power project. Ironically, the bulldozers already cleared an ancient geoglyph known as "the sun."  The solar project is being delayed since Solar Millennium's switch to photovoltaic panels will require approval, and the company is also attempting to secure financing.  If the company clears these hurdles, construction could resume next year and destroy up to 11 square-miles of historical sites and desert habitat. Indigenous America Asks Questions About U.S. "Green" Policies from Robert Lundahl on Vimeo .

A poem about the desert by Ruth Nolan, a desert resident and artist who has a blog with even more poetry over at Phantom Seedlings .  I came across this poem while reading James Goebell's A Geology of Borders blog.

A recent article in Sierra Magazine praised the benefits of rooftop solar leasing programs, which allow homeowners to install solar panels with little or no up front costs.  These programs and other policies can revolutionize the way we obtain our energy, and erode the old paradigm of destroying wildlands to power our refrigerators and microwaves.  As renewable energy expert John Farrell told Sierra Magazine, "[o]ur policy is favoring Big Solar—or Big Anything, really—at the expense of the small stuff." We need to pay more attention to the solution right in front of us.  Parking lots, rooftops, reservoirs, and so on.  Solar panels can make use of these spaces as " distributed generation ". In addition to the solar leasing programs identified in the article, we need policies like feed-in-tariffs and Property Assessed Clean Energy ( PACE ).  PACE programs enable homeowners to pay for rooftop solar installations through installments on their local property tax ove

According to Forbes , German firm Solar Millennium and its American front company - Solar Trust of America - have announced that they will not accept the 2.1 billion dollar Federal loan guarantee for the Blythe solar power project, and they are now going to use photovoltaic technology (the same panels used on rooftops!).   The company switched to photovoltaic (PV) technology from the antiquated solar trough design because PV is much more cost efficient.  However, the company's change in technology represents a significant departure from its original project application and may require additional environmental review.  The abrupt change in plans may have been the reason the company abandoned the Federal loan, which was granted based on its original solar trough plans.  The company will have to compete for private investments as the markets are taking an ugly turn. Initial construction for the 11 square-mile Blythe solar project has already destroyed sites considered sacred by Nati

A pre-construction marker photographed in Ivanpah, March 2010. Brightsource Energy is well into the construction phase for its Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System (ISEGS), with over one-third of the 5.6 square-mile site scraped of vegetation and wildlife.  BrightSource Energy touts the construction jobs it has created, in part funded by a 1.6 billion dollar taxpayer-backed loan guarantee under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. No doubt the workers receiving a paycheck from the company are in a better financial position for as long as the construction activity lasts.  Once the project is completed, only a small fraction of the current workforce will support plant operations. A solar facility in Nevada employed 350 construction workers, but only supported 5 permanent jobs afterward.  The project required millions in taxpayer funding. Central station solar on public lands is, at best, a stop gap economic measure that will not sustain economic growth for the worki