Solar is going big. Again.
The federal
government on Monday green-lit a 485-megawatt solar plant that would
generate enough carbon-free electricity to power 180,000 homes when it
comes online in the Southern California desert.
During the Great Recession, that was nothing unusual about billions of dollars in federal stimulus money fueling big green dreams
of carpeting the Mojave Desert with giant solar power plants on
government-owned land, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s
efforts to fight climate change. That land, however, often turned out to
be home to desert tortoises, blunt-nosed leopard lizards, and other
endangered wildlife. Many of those projects went belly-up in part because of fierce opposition from environmental groups.
That
prompted an effort by the federal government to be “smart from the
start” about where it allowed big renewable energy plants to be built.
So the Blythe Mesa Solar Project,
which was approved Monday, will deploy tens of thousands of solar
panels across 3,587 acres of already disturbed or fallow farmland where
wheat, alfalfa, and citrus had been grown. No desert tortoises will be
harmed.
That won Blythe the
support of Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness
Society, and other big environmental groups that previously opposed
other solar power plant projects.
“Due
to the previously disturbed condition of nearly all the land proposed
for the project, numerous environmental organizations supported the
project because it conformed with our recommended criteria for siting
large-scale projects in the California desert,” Jeff Aardahl, California
representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said in an email.
The
project’s developer, Renewable Resources Group, is a Los Angeles
company that invests in green energy and agriculture. “We specialize in
developing utility-scale solar…projects on previously disturbed private
land,” Tom Eisenhauer, a spokesperson for the firm, said in an email.
Communities
that find such gargantuan renewable energy projects in their midst also
are getting smarter. Riverside County last year imposed a $150-per-acre
annual fee on solar power plants and will collect nearly $500,000 a
year from the Blythe project.
That
the Blythe project is moving forward is also a sign that solar energy
is becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Earlier huge
solar power plants had only been commercially viable thanks to a 30
percent federal tax credit. That incentive is set to fall to 10 percent
at the end of 2016, meaning the Renewable Resources Group likely thinks
it can make money without the government largesse.
Hurdles
remain. The company must still sign a long-term power purchase
agreement with a utility that wants to buy the electricity generated by
the project. If the California legislature passes a pending bill
requiring the state to obtain half its electricity from renewable
sources by 2030, there will likely be no shortage of buyers of solar
energy.
“We don’t discuss PPA status, but we’re planning for
commercial operation in the next few years—and we feel good about that,”
said Eisenhauer.Aardahl said the battle to generate clean, green energy while protecting desert wildlife continues despite the approval of projects like Blythe.
“I
don’t think that one project sited in an environmentally appropriate
location signals that ‘smart from the start’ planning is now the norm,”
he said. “Although there are many such projects, most of which are on
disturbed private lands, some continue to be proposed on public land we
consider inappropriate.”
