Posted February 26, 2009
The deserts of the southwest face an unprecedented land rush of solar companies seeking to build large-scale projects, potentially covering over 600,000 acres in California alone. While these projects are touted as solving the global warming crisis, they also have serious environmental impacts that need to be carefully considered. They also entail the construction of long transmission lines, which have their own impacts and greenhouse gas emissions. At the Desert Protective Council, we are very concerned about the number and location of these projects in the desert.
Of course we agree that action on global warming is vital, because climate change could soon rival habitat destruction as the leading cause of species extinction, and will also add immeasurably to human misery. In addition, recent studies project that Earth will warm twice as much by 2100 as previously thought. Yet there is a serious possibility that some measures could do more harm than good.
We have already seen our country rush into support for ethanol as a solution to global warming, only to discover that its benefits are limited compared to the resources used to create it. We are concerned that the same could be true for our efforts to produce renewable energy in the desert. The public remains too little aware of the impact these projects will have on the desert environment, while the impact they will have on global climate change remains uncertain. Under such uncertainty, the best course is to follow the physician’s motto: “First, do no harm.”
To explore these issues, we present this fact sheet, in question and answer format.
Q: Isn’t the desert just a vast, empty wasteland? What’s wrong with putting renewable energy projects there?
ANSWER HERE
Q: If large solar power plants have drawbacks, what other alternatives do we have to combat global warming?
ANSWER HERE
Q: Even if we do all this, won’t we still need some large-scale CSP plants?
ANSWER HERE
Q: Can’t we find some places in the desert for large-scale renewables that don’t require habitat destruction?
ANSWER HERE
Q: There has been a lot of talk lately about the need for a national energy grid. Don’t we need new transmission lines to get the power from the desert, where the best solar resources are located, to the cities of the Southwest and the West Coast?
ANSWER HERE
