Renewable energy projects threaten some of California’s rarest plants

The proposed construction of massive wind and solar energy projects on public land in the California desert would hasten destruction and further fragment land that is home to 17% of state’s rarest plants, botanists said Saturday.

“Most of the solar and wind projects currently under review are in the wrong places,” said Greg Suba, conservation program director for the California Native Plant Society. He and other experts spoke at Cal State Fullerton for the Southern California Botanists’ 35th annual symposium.

“We believe that full surveys of all plants — not just of targeted species — should be required for all these project sites,” Suba said. “Plant species represent the underlying fabric of an ecosystem.”

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management and California Energy Commission are reviewing 130 applications to build wind and solar projects on more than a million acres of public land. Companies hope to begin construction on about a dozen of those projects by late next year.

The development of solar power facilities in the desert has been a top priority of the Obama administration as it seeks to ease the nation’s dependency on fossil fuels and address climate change.

But Suba and James Andre, director of the Sweeney Granite Mountains Desert Research Center in the east Mojave community of Kelso, urged that the projects currently under review by state and federal regulatory agencies be built on more than 200,000 acres of land already identified as ecologically disturbed.

“It’s the end of much of the California desert,” said Andre. “Millions of acres could eventually be bulldozed and fenced off. It’s your land, but you won’t be able to go there.”

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--Louis Sahagun reporting from Fullerton

 

Comments

[sheila]

since it's been repeatedly proven that 100% of the US' electricity needs can EASILY be met by using PV within the existing built environment, and since that would also mean no destructive, SF6-spewing powerlines (and eminent domain), and since that would mean no billions of gallons of water waste a year, and since that would mean that our power could be DEMOCRATICALLY OWNED, why on Earth are we letting Chevron pave over pristine desert ecosystems that WE own, just to hijack ratepayers?

Yep, Chevron and BP are the 2 biggest investors in Bright Source and they want to use their "Drill here, Drill now" mentality to destroy the environment for private profits, only this time using Big Solar (which also means Big Gas, Big Transmission and Big Water). It is disastrous from an economic AND an environmental standpoint, meanwhile all our homes and businesses bake and sprawl, right where the power COULD be produced - where we need it.

Big Solar is as bad as Big Coal - we need to stop this total decimation and promote energy independence with AB 811 loans and generous feed in tariffs so that WE can participate in the clean energy economy and be fairly compensated when we produce more clean power than we use. It's the right and left wing's perfect solution - the only opposition is Big Energy and it's puppets in our government (yes, Salazar and Schwarzenegger, I'm looking at you)...

Libertarians, Greens - we are all on the same side here. WE should own the power and no wilderness should be destroyed. It's cheaper, faster, more fair, and better for the planet and ratepayers and property owners - a 100% win.

[bunglejungle]

I don't understand this. Greater Los Angeles alone has probably a thousand square miles of rooftops, almost none of which have solar panels, yet we're quibbling over a few hundred acres in the (inner) desert. If we installed the photovoltaic panels right where the power is actually being used, how much would that save in transmission costs?

[Larry in BH]

"It’s your land, but you won’t be able to go there.”

The vast majority of Californians don't go there now -- and don't care about the loss of a little desert land in order to feed the human need for clean electricity.

Our evolution as a species is dependent on the use of energy to transform natural resources like rocks and sand into human-created steel and cement that benefits us all. That is called "progress" for our species.

Yes, all of us Baby Boomers want to be good environmental citizens - but we don't have to go overboard and hurt human society for the sake of a plant or a fish. Is there suvival more important than our survival?

It is scandalous that the Federal government has stopped pumping water into California riverways at this time of great drought -- destroying precious farmland and hundreds of thousands of agricultural jobs that have dried up just to protect the Delta smelt fish from getting caught in the water pumps.

Sorry, but I don't agree with bankrupting and destroying human lives and families to protect a smelt or flower that I will never see anyway. Who is more important to protect in modern world where the population continues to grow.

Like it or not -- human population is growing -- if we don't use our God-given natural resources and human intellect to solve our most basic problems of agriculture food production and man-made energy to thrive -- then we humans will not be able to survive -- because of extreme environmentalists like this who choose plant and fish over humans.

This is environmentalism run amok -- please stop stopping progress that is needed by we humans. We should be celebrating the transformation of deserts into solar factories that can create jobs and new cities to house our growing population.

[2 cents]

the eco-types have sought to impose vast emcumbrances on our economy for the sake of ill thought-out schemes to "go green" - that they might be the very ones to save us from this nonsense is tragically comic - but in the end it's the staff at "do-good" foundations and the legions of lawyers that reap the rewards - think of it all as a giant Rube Goldberg device for the destruction of wealth and the rendering of nil

[honestly...]

Science is finally at a point where to some extent it is building mechanisms to police itself to keep the earth from being destroyed by science itself.

While it is good to see that there are those out there who feel that just because it is renewable it doesn't mean it can be placed any where you like and with little or no regard for what gets destroyed or how it looks, it is also important to keep the greater picture in mind so that emerging sustainable renewble energy projects don't meet hurdles that will make them more costly and less likely to be built.

Let's ask the Obama administration to make a good thing even better by only granting DOI Federal "Free Use Permits" in areas where they will create the least environmental and visual impacts. This can be done by mapping 5 by 5 mile tracts in remote locations that will be the only places where solar projects will be permited. Granted, some "land use" will be lost and some "sensitive areas" will be sacrificed for the greater good of the environment, but setting aside 200 square miles of public lands for this purpose will make California self reliant in energy, and down the road it will pave the way for cost effective water desalination -- Another hurdle Californians will face this century.

[Mr. Sunshine]

Cancel all solar and windfarm projects, we don't need them. Just build nuclear power plants.

[Joel Robinson]

At Naturalist For You, we understand that our deserts are beautiful, fragile, biologically diverse, neglected, abused, and misunderstood. They are natural legacies to be preserved for all future generations. Considering the demand for alternative energy comes from our cities and suburbs, where natural features are limited or extremely modified, we have an opportunity to produce energy in the very place where we consume. In the cities and suburbs, there are plenty of vehicular corridors, structural surfaces, and innovative communities that are ready to adapt for alternative energy infrastructure and practices. Ultimately the cheapest and easiest alternative to meet our energy demands is to conserve energy at work and at home. Our rural natural areas are irreplaceable sanctuaries for outdoor recreation, ecosystem stability, and habitat value. They are not forgotten wastelands to be sacrificed in an effort to address artificial challenges that were recently created. Please join us for a nature tour through one of our publicly-owned natural areas and receive a remarkable experience: www.naturalist-for-you.org

[tabithatwinkles]

Why do we have to "solve" one problem by creating another? And likewise,focusing on how this issue pits similar-minded people against each other isn't helping any either. The answer is simple: there are other places to put solar panels, end of story. Why anyone would want to put them in ecologically distinct places at the detriment of that ecosystem is beyond me. In fact, it is as short-sighted as allowing the energy industry to continue moving in its current direction. The desert for some may seem like a vast wasteland waiting to be used, but quite frankly for some of us-and most certainly for the animals and plants that live there-the California desert is not simply one of our state's greatest natural treasures, but it is also an intrinsic part of our state's history and character. To destroy or compromise the desert would be like crushing a butterfly under a wheel.

[Ozzie Zehner]

Solar: A Multiplication of Side Effects

Your briefing on California’s desert solar initiative highlights one of the many side effects that can occur as alternative energies such as wind turbines and solar cells have take hold of imaginations bent on energy-production over energy-conservation. Solar cells incur large up-front costs and vast quantities of mined minerals. They are energy-intensive to build, yielding a net carbon price tag. Furthermore, they are difficult to install, require regular cleanings and rely on a thinly-spread solar radiation from a sun that only shines half of the day, a cosmological constant showing no signs of improving.

Meanwhile, the same funds pledged to finance light-emitting diode (LED) lighting or building insulation would conserve 10 times more energy than the desert solar program would produce. Additionally, efficiency programs do not require us to plow up the desert.

For solar-based energy to make an impact, we will have to shift funding away from fabrication in deserts and toward research and development. But more importantly, we should implement passive solar techniques on a much larger scale, update building codes, and plant trees (the ultimate solar mechanism) to shade buildings so that we don't need electricity from the desert in the first place.

Ozzie Zehner is an energy consultant ZehnerStudio.com and the Executive Director of Imagitrends.com, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit.