DesertBlog

Solar Projects in a National Monument?

On “Which Way LA?” last week, John White of the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies (CEERT) said he believes that environmental concerns will be addressed as solar projects are developed in the California desert. But if the Renewable Energy Transmission Initiative (RETI) is any indication, environmental concerns about Big Solar are being brushed aside in favor of sheer economic interest.

And who is coordinating the RETI process for the California Energy Commission? None other than CEERT, an organization heavily weighted toward Big Renewables, and with little representation from the photovoltaic industry or other proponents of distributed renewables.

According to an activist who has been following the RETI process since its inception, the process is “backpedalling from the position that environmental concerns would guide transmission. Now it’s full steam ahead with establishing ‘commercial’ Competitive Renewable Energy Zones.”

RETI’s failure to address environmental concerns begins with it shunning such basic concepts as placing projects on already disturbed lands rather than in pristine habitat. The process guiding placement of Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) is so loose that even national monuments and designated Areas of Critical Environment Concern would be open for development. That’s why the Desert Protective Council, along with many other conservation organizations, has signed on to a letter critical of the entire RETI process.

These excerpts from the letter give insight into the basis of our concerns:

…the [RETI report] states that the environmental criteria are designed to identify those CREZ (competitive renewable energy zones) that “maximize the use of previously disturbed lands.” Yet, from the outset, because of a non-environmental special interest, the Environmental Working Group [a RETI committee] got mired down in a dispute over the definition of “disturbed lands.” The outcome was that “disturbed lands” were so narrowly defined that this criterion became useless from any practical standpoint.

Likewise, in deciding what areas should be excluded from energy zones, most of the environmental organizations requested that habitat for threatened and endangered species, as well as HCP/NCCP areas, Desert Wildlife Management Areas, and BLM Areas of Critical Environmental Concern be included in the exclusion list. This was not done.

As for the environmental criteria, non-voting environmentalists were again overruled. The criteria, the choice of data sets, and the weighting were artificial and arbitrary. To illustrate this problem, if one asked most biologists and environmentalists where to put solar projects, the response would most likely be: “rooftops” or “disturbed land.” Arguably, maximizing use of disturbed land is perhaps the most important criterion to consider when locating an environmentally preferable Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (“CREZ”). However, the EWG failed to properly identify disturbed lands and made this criterion just one among eight, minimizing its effectiveness.

Another example of the criteria deficiencies is the fact that RETI’s species data set included diversity but not rarity. Hence, critical habitat for a rare species is not given any weight if the habitat is not also diverse. Using this criterion may have given the Kramer CREZ, in tortoise habitat, a more benign environmental ranking than it merits. In sum, the environmental ranking criteria are not robust, do not reflect conservation biology principles, and do not reflect the conservation community’s input.

As it turned out, the economic ranking values (driven by high energy output) swamped the environmental rankings anyway, so that the environmental ranking exercise had little effect on the designation of preferred CREZs.

As just one example of how poorly the environmental process worked … a map of the Palm Springs CREZ shows that renewable projects and/or transmission lines are proposed within the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, in Conservation Areas designated by the MSHCP/NCCP, in the BLM Whitewater River Area of Critical Environmental Concern, in the Big Morongo Area of Critical Environmental Concern, and in the San Gorgonio Wilderness. This is unacceptable. Additionally, the maps prepared for eastern portion of the Coachella Valley showed similar intrusions into the Santa Rosa Wilderness, the National Monument, critical endangered bighorn habitat and high value scenic and cultural areas.

While it’s clear environmental concerns are being steamrolled in the RETI process, what’s not clear is what effect, if any, RETI will have on the renewable energy landscape. Some observers note that RETI is completely overlooking the thin film photovoltaic revolution, and thus, by the time the process is complete, the market will have moved past it. RETI will be reviewed as so unreliable it will simply gather dust on some government shelf and have no impact on policy — we can only hope!