There is a perfect example of green gone wrong happening in the Ivanpah desert with a large solar farm being installed. This is wrecking a very fragile and diverse habitat.
Some numbers from CalFinder (Nationwide Home Solar Power Contractors and Information):
CEC OKs Massive Ivanpah Solar Plant in Mojave Desert
One large-scale solar thermal power plant in the Mojave Desert may be close to final approval. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station (ISEGS) is at least one step closer. A site committee from the California Energy Commission has endorsed the power plant, recommending its approval by the five-member CEC.
The design is rated at "nearly 400 megawatts" and:
Nearly 174,000 mirrors will concentrate solar energy onto three towers, the cumulative land footprint of the plant being 3,582 acres. Development and construction costs are estimated at $1.1 billion. The U.S. government has offered a loan guarantee of up to $1.37 billion to Brightsource Energy for the project.
In contrast, a 1,000 megawatt nuclear plant costs about $3 billion and this includes the end-of-life decommissioning costs and facilities to store the spent fuel. For a bit less than three times the money, you can get significantly more than double the electricity and this is electricity that is available 24/7/365, not just when the sun shines and the sky is clear. The word you are looking for is STUPID The Sierra Club endorses this project for some strange reason and Chris Clarke sent them a letter. I am 180 degrees in disagreement with Chris' stand on Climate Change and our involvement but I am in total agreement from an environmental standpoint.
Get some perspective on climate change!
I subscribe to an email list operated by the Sierra Club and devoted to the topic of desert conservation. The majority of the active participants on the list are horrified by the Club�s support of desert public lands energy development, but every now and then someone will post a note saying that we need to remember how serious climate change is, with the unspoken message that we should not be too upset when a beautiful piece of desert is needlessly sacrificed to the energy industry. This weekend, as we were reeling from the news that the first Ivanpah Valley solar project had been approved and tortoises were already being relocated, someone made just such a comment.
I dashed off an angry reply, took a few moments to decide whether I would likely regret hitting �send,� decided that I didn�t care if I regretted it, hit �send,� then went to the desert for the weekend. On my return last night I found that I did not regret it. That reply, with minor grammatical corrections, follows.
I know that compared to some of my beloved compatriots on this forum I am a relative youngster a mere half century old, but I have been watching cherished and important pieces of the landscape be lost to foolishness or greed or random accident for most of that time. From the increasingly old second-growth hardwood forests of my native Western New York, to fragments of the chaparral and oak savanna ringing the San Francisco Bay area destroyed for housing now unoccupied, to the vernal pools plowed up to build UC Merced, to the old-growth redwood savaged in an orgy of junk-bond logging in the early 1990s, I have � as have many of you � lost landscapes I care about before, far too many times.
But this is the first time I can recall losing a landscape while being chided by ostensible allies that I am being short-sighted.
A very powerful essay and a kick to the gut to the Sierra Club and all of the other enviro businesses masquerading as advocacy groups.
