Mojave Desert Blog

Many national environmmental groups think that the solution is to find alliances with multi-million dollar companies on Wall Street to advance a sustainable agenda. But when they do that, they have to make compromises on how they define "sustainable" and "green".  The world can only be sustainable if the 99% acts sustainably.  Solar panels on rooftops, not on desert wildlands.  Flipping off the light switch for the room you are not using. Recycling your plastics.  Taking a bike, and not a car.  Sharing the planet with a growing population will not be easy, and saving the wildlands we love will be even more challenging.

The US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is accepting public comments until midnight 12 July on a proposal to extend eagle "take" permits -- permission to kill or harass protected bald and golden eagles -- from 5 years to 30 years.  The move is intended to make it easier for the wind energy industry, which is building massive wind facilities that are already killing the protected birds. For some good background, Chris Clarke wrote a great piece on the proposed rule on KCET.  The bottom line, though, is that wildlife officials will end up giving permission to wind companies to kill eagles over a 30-year period, and eliminate flexibility to save the birds if their numbers dwindle during those 30 years.  How will the USFWS save a threatened bald or golden eagle population if they cannot do anything to stop one of the birds' biggest threats -- spinning wind turbines -- because they issued too many permits some 30 years earlier? Locking wildlife management into 30-year co

The Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign and the group's Deputy Conservation Director applauded Department of Interior's plans to authorize a 355 square mile industrial wind facility in Wyoming that is expected to kill as many as 5,400 birds and 6,300 bats each year .   The Club's "Blowing in the Right Direction" article in Grist claims the energy could be shipped nearly 700 miles to Nevada in order to replace the dirty Reid Gardner coal plant, even though the Sierra Club released a study in June saying that Reid Gardner could be shut down by implementing local energy efficiency measures that actually save ratepayers money.  From the environmental impact statement.  Alternative 1R is the proposal that Interior plans to approve, despite the heavy toll on wildlife. Extensive Impacts The Chokecherry and Sierra Madre Wind Project -- a single project divided into two units that each span over 100,000 acres of mostly ecologically intact W

The Clean Coalition and Sierra Club of California filed a petition demanding that the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) reconsider and strengthen its planned implementation of a feed-in-tariff (FiT). Solar Done Right applauds this petition and encourages the CPUC to implement a more robust FiT. Local clean energy advocates believe that the CPUC’s late May decision on how to implement California SB 32—a law passed in 2009 requiring CPUC and utilities to expand FiT programs in the state—failed to address the law’s requirements and does not fairly compensate ratepayers for the value of distributed generation. Specifically, the petition notes that the FiT formula in the CPUC decision does not recognize one of the greatest benefits of rooftop solar installations to other utility ratepayers—the avoidance of new transmission and distribution costs, which are required when the utility companies invest in expensive and remote power plants far from the point of use. The petition

BrightSource Energy -- the company that has destroyed 5.6 square miles of pristine desert habitat in the Ivanpah Valley for a massive solar facility there -- recently assumed responsibility for Solar Trust of America's (STA) proposed Palen Solar power project during an auction of bankrupt Solar Trust of America's project pipeline. The project would be built on nearly 8 square miles of desert habitat between Blythe and Desert Center, California, and would impact Mojave fringe-toed lizard habitat. The California Energy Commission (CEC) approved STA's Palen Solar project in December 2010, but would presumably have to conduct revised assessments since BrightSource probably would alter the proposed project to include power tower technology.  BrightSource Energy filed a petition with the  CEC, however, seeking to "transfer ownership of the Final Decision" approving the original Palen project.   The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) has previously expressed c

Why is Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) buying solar power from hundreds of miles away when the sun shines on PG&E customers' rooftops just like it shines anywhere else?   The utility company for much of northern and central California plans to buy solar power from BrightSource Energy's proposed Hidden Hills Solar facility, which would be built in a remote corner of California known as Charleston View.  Getting that energy to our cities will require depleting natural resources far from PG&E customers, lots of money, and a financial gamble by a small electric utility in Nevada. Where the Heck is Charleston View? Charleston View is located in the Pahrump Valley on the border of California and Nevada, east of Death Valley National Park.  Travelers and traders use to cross this remote stretch of desert along the Old Spanish Trail and stop at natural springs that are fed by groundwater flows originating in the nearby Spring Mountains - a majestic range overlooki

Nevada Senators Reid and Heller introduced a bill ( S. 3346 ) on 27 June that would designate a new national monument, but the legislation would also allow the construction of a new transmission line through that monument and give away significant swaths of other public lands to developers and utility companies throughout the southern Nevada region.  The legislation is being touted in the press as a significant conservation bill, but the national monument may only be a sweetener to accompany compromises that will facilitate Las Vegas' continued sprawl into desert wildlands. Disposal of Public Lands Residents of southern Nevada have fought for years to establish the Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, and the bill would indeed protect 22,650 acres of the area and transfer that land to the National Park Service.  But the "Las Vegas Valley Public Land and Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument Act of 2012"  would provide significant benefit to developers and

The Alta Wind Energy Center continues to consume and industrialize dozens of square miles of desert habitat in the western Mojave Desert.  The total project area already encompasses over 50 square miles -- nearly 1.5 times the size of Manhattan -- and continues to expand.   Hundreds of wind turbines -- each over 420 feet tall -- require new roads and pads carved into desert soil to supply Southern California Edison (SCE) customers with "guilt free" wind energy.  Don't tell SCE customers that wind turbines require immense amounts of cement, steel and copper to deliver that energy to them, not to mention natural gas "peaker" plants running in the background.   Meanwhile, a UCLA study found that Los Angeles County could meet much of its energy demands with solar panels on rooftops or over parking lots .  A single wind turbine pad under construction in the western Mojave Desert, requiring tons of cement , and yet another scar in the land. Photo taken recentl