Disturbed Lands Solar and Desert Conservation
Some solar companies have insisted on having wide access to remote and intact desert habitat to build new solar facilities, lobbying against land management policies that would restrict industrial-scale energy development on lands of ecological importance. The Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission have rejected requests to analyze disturbed land alternatives for projects being proposed for intact desert habitat, sometimes citing the difficulty companies have in acquiring private lands. But hundreds of megawatts of solar energy development are proposed or being built on already-disturbed lands in private ownership -- typically on agricultural land -- severely undermining the assertion by the industry and its proponents that the destruction of public lands is necessary to generate solar energy. In the latest news, SunPower is set to build a 579 megawatt facility in the Antelope Valley on nearly 7.4 square miles of agricultural land, financed by Warren Buffett