DesertBlog

1. 17 Responses to “Public Meeting on RETI”

2. By Carl Zichella on Jan 6, 2009

   Friends:

   The article above seriously mischaracterizes the work RETI is trying to do and accuses participants of misleading the public. That’s really unfortunate. All the work being done is transparent and the process is intended to build only that infrastructure that is needed on the most appropriate and least environmentally harmful sites. There is no such thing as an impact free energy source. But this can be and is being done with great care. It may well turn out that we need to build far fewer transmission assets than previously believed (I personally believe that is the case). That’s a good thing. RETI approached this from the standpoint of using to the maximum extent possible existing infrastructure and rights of way. It is simply untrue that we can meet global warming challenges simply with distributed generation. It is untrue that RETI participants so not care about desert protection. I have worked on public lands protection issues for 25 years, 22 as staff of the Sierra Club. As Midwest director for the Sierra Club I helped whip support for the California Desert Protection Act. Johanna Wald of NRDC, my cohort in this work has more than 30 years of this work under her belt and is one of the most distinguished public lands activists in the entire country. Parenthetically, Bill Powers — a friend and someone I greatly admire — has submitted influential comments to the process that have been taken into account in the report and ongoing work. Johanna and I have raised the point about reduced loads from retiring fossil or expiring long term contracts too, This is not being ignored.

   There is a tremendously important reason we are doing this; one that is inescapable and critical to the long term survival of desert ecosystems and species: global warming and climate change, the effects of which are already apparent in our state.

   It is untrue that we can meet all our goals with distributed solar or wind or geothermal by themselves. We need all the energy efficiency we can get. We need all the distributed solar we can get, we need all the wind we can appropriately site and wheel. We need the geothermal resources we can muster in the right locations. But we also need large-scale, appropriately sited solar resources to prevent the full brunt of global warming from destroying all the resources we care about and have fought so hard to protect. Failing to do this will mean the loss of Joshua trees and peninsula bighorn sheep and other desert species, as well as the submersion of coastal wetlands, the deterioration of giant sequoia forests, the extinction of high-elevation species, the loss of water from diminishing Sierra snow pack further degrading our aquatic ecosystems and imperiled fish populations, and worsening air pollution damaging the health of millions of our people and harming ecosystems at all elevations.

   I don’t believe desert activists don’t care about these other things any more than I believe forest activists do not care about the desert. We are all in this together. We are all affected, and the work of our activist lifetimes is in danger of being wasted if we fail.

   As an environmental representative on RETI I respect the concerns expressed by the author of this piece even if I disagree with the accusations. No one has been excluded from this process and many people from many organizations have helped us including colleagues from CBD, Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Defenders of Wildlife among others. Our calls are open and every piece of information generated by the process so far including maps and presentations is available on the RETI portion of the CEC website. Our Phase IB final report was posted just yesterday. Check it out for yourself. We had some challenges with data in phase I, and disturbed lands was one issue we struggled with. There is give and take between stakeholders to be sure, but everyone has been respectful of each others views, values and needs. And the process is far from over. All RETI participants would prefer to use disturbed sites if possible. We are presently ground-truthing the zones identified in Phase I and some will drop out if they are found to be environmentally problematical, can’t deliver the energy we thought because of other constraints (such as BLM’s 1% development cap in DWMAs or ACECs) or infeasible for other reasons (like fragmented ownership for example). We are encouraging the use of disturbed areas for zones as we can best identify them, and a number of projects have been proposed for such areas including retired farmland. No zone presently identified is cast in stone. Many of the disturbed areas people have called to our attention are already in zones we identified in Phase I, and those which are not are being explored right now. It is premature to judge the outcome of the process at this point. Also I am happy to report that state and federal agencies have been very protective of desert resources and it is unfair to imply otherwise. We may not always completely agree, but we are using the best data we can get to make the calls we are making. Nothing we do substitutes for the legally required environmental review projects must undertake. RETI is not a regulatory process. It is intended to provide guidance to regulatory agencies about the least environmentally and most economically beneficial places to put projects and transmission. In most cases these are the same things. For instance, the cheapest place to put projects is near existing infrastructure and rights of way. That means upgrading existing lines may be the cheapest transmission solution in many if not all cases. That in turn prevents the need for a new line. This is environmentally as well as economically beneficial. While some lines are going to be needed, much of what we need to do may be able to be done without them. That is good news and a lesson from Phase I.

   Delay is our enemy in fighting climate change. We all need to work together to do what is necessary and to do it quickly and right. I firmly believe we are on the right track and I encourage you to attend the meeting, learn more, and help us accomplish our mutual goal of protecting desert resources while fighting global warming.

   Thanks for your ongoing work. If you have any questions or comments for me please feel free to contact me at: carl.zichella@sierraclub.org.

   Carl Zichella

3. By claudia sall on Jan 6, 2009

   As a ratepayer of a company governed by the PUC, I am angry that the RETI process has not only blocked participation of citizen groups onto the steering committe, but even worse allowed the non-PUC municipalities to drive the process illustrates that this State agency is being led by special interests. The citizens and ratepayers under the PUC are not represented nor served.

   The ownership within the California Desert Conservation Plan has changed since its creation more than 20 years ago. RETI has ignored that new ownership by showing the Sunlink and Green Path North transmission lines are a done deal. The property within the Green Path North corridor protects lands known as the Big Morongo Canyon Preserve with corresponding ACEC, The Pioneertown Mountains Conservancy nor the Bighorn Mountain Wilderness, Almost certainly if these lands had been protected when the CDCP was drawn up, no alternate corridor would have been considered.

4. By Larry Hogue on Jan 6, 2009

   Carl,

   Thank you for commenting on DesertBlog. The post seems to have hit a nerve with you. Let me say that the post was not intended to discredit the work or the reputation of either you or Johanna Wald – nor do I think the post does that.

   I have to disagree with your statement that the post misrepresents the RETI process and that it accuses RETI members of misleading the public. The post accurately reflects the view of RETI expressed by the Desert Protective Council and five other environmental groups in a comment letter on the RETI Phase 1b report. These groups included the California / Nevada Desert Energy Committee of the Sierra Club, the Mojave Desert Land Trust, The Wildlands Conservancy, the Western Watersheds Project, and the National Parks Conservation Association. Their views are shared by other conservation groups and activists. Needless to say, I think their take on the RETI process is accurate.

   I had covered some of the contents of that comment letter in a previous post, but unfortunately the link to that post in the entry above was garbled when you read it (it’s fixed now). For clarification for all of our readers, that letter has now been posted in its entirety at our main website (http://www.dpcinc.org/_new/EnviroGroups_RETI_Comments.pdf – this link is also now added to the blog post above).

   To put it simply, the Desert Protective Council and the rest of these groups are dismayed at the direction RETI is headed. This contrasts strongly with your more sanguine view. Here are a few sample quotes:

   On the flawed premise that is the cornerstone of the RETI process: “[Direct-to-grid photovoltaic facilities] would drastically reduce the need for new transmission and for massive transmission-dependent projects. However, on account of its narrow mission as well as the conflicts inherent in its industry-dominated stakeholder group, RETI is ill-equipped to objectively address this non-transmission outcome. … The outcome of the RETI process is a foregone conclusion – a transmission-dependent system of large remotely located power plants.”

   On giving priority to disturbed lands: I remember your call last summer for comments supporting the idea that disturbed lands should be given priority ahead of distant, intact habitats. I posted an alert about this on our blog and I believe I sent you a comment myself. The view of the signatories to this letter is that all of us who made this recommendation, including you and Ms. Wald, were simply over-ruled by the industry stakeholders on RETI. The letter puts it this way:

   “The environmental ranking process was a frustrating exercise. First, the composition of the Environmental Working Group (“EWG”) was at odds with its charge. For comparison, the Phase 1A Working Group (which formulated the assumptions underlying the economic ranking) had a voting membership that was dominated by industry, with only two non-industry members (state representatives). But, in stark contrast to its environmental charge, the EWG which did the environmental ranking had a vast majority of non-environmental voting members and only two environmental voting members. Although non-stakeholder environmental organizations were allowed to have representatives who could partake in the discussion, they could not vote, and on several major issues their concerns went unaddressed.

   “More importantly, the 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 EWG 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. … The bottom line is that RETI’s environmental ranking system fails to indicate the relative environmental cost of the CREZs as it purports to do.”

   Clearly, this contrasts strongly with your statement that “all RETI participants would prefer to use disturbed sites if possible.” And while it may be that this is simply a different interpretation of the same events, what doesn’t seem open to interpretation is the map of the Palm Springs CREZ generated by the Coachella Valley Association of Governments. The map shows that this CREZ would invade a variety of parks and preserves, including the Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument, Conservation Areas designated by the Coachella Valley MSHCP/NCCP, the BLM Whitewater River Area of Critical Environmental Concern, the Big Morongo Area of Critical Environmental Concern, and the San Gorgonio Wilderness. As the letter puts it, this is simply unacceptable. And this is one of the smaller CREZ’s. One imagines that, if similar detailed maps were drawn for the larger CREZ’s, even more serious intrusions on parks, preserves, wilderness areas, etc., would be discovered. With RETI generating results such as these (and with the results themselves remaining highly uncertain due to the lack of detail in RETI’s own maps), it shouldn’t be hard to see why we are dismayed, shocked even, by this process.

   (Perhaps the final report you mentioned has rectified some of these problems and addressed some of the concerns in the comment letter. If so, please feel free to reply with a comment below with specific references, or e-mail me separately.)

   With respect to the “open” nature of the process, here is the enviro groups’ assessment of that process: “RETI’s charge is to be open and transparent. However, this was an ongoing problem. The Working Group meetings that formulated the underlying economic assumptions were not publicly noticed. The stakeholders steering committee (SSC) meetings were neither open nor transparent. The SSC meetings repeatedly excluded legitimate environmental representatives while allowing other outside observers. Finally, after several months of this conduct and repeated complaints, the SSC voted to allow observers. Then, with no explanation, this open policy was suspended for the October 8, 2008 SSC meeting. In sum, one cannot fairly characterize the RETI process as open and transparent.” And from my own experience, members of our blog community have asked how they can submit comments now, if they can’t attend the meeting this Saturday. There simply does not seem to be a publicly noticed way to do this.

   In all of these areas, there is a large disagreement between your reassuring statements and the view shared by DPC and the five other conservation groups. Yet nowhere in the current post did I accuse RETI members of “misleading the public,” as you suggested. In my earlier post on the RETI process, I said this: “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.” This statement expresses a different view than both you and Mr. White have of the RETI process, but one that we believe is based on the facts. I don’t believe that pointing out these opposing views is the same as accusing anyone of “misleading the public.”

   Speaking personally, I view having two environmental stakeholders on a group like this as vital (though two is obviously too few). Others disagree, believing that environmental participation in a process that has gone this far off the tracks merely lends it unwarranted legitimacy. I believe that the groups inside the process and those outside the process need each other, and should treat each other with respect, or at least civility (and I realize that civility has been sorely lacking in some comments leveled by groups and individuals who feel shut out of the process). I would encourage you to look at those of us pushing for more transparency and a larger place at the table for environmental concerns as your allies. And, since you are the only representatives of the environmental viewpoint in RETI, we simply hope for more “watch-doggedness” from you, and less of the sanguinity expressed in your comment.

   I invite further comments on this issue, and I encourage everyone to keep the conversation civil and factually based.

5. By Larry Hogue on Jan 6, 2009

   And Claudia, thanks for the comment!

6. By Carl Zichella on Jan 7, 2009

   Larry:

   Thanks for your clarifications, I appreciate them very much. Comments like “RETI engages in an elaborate shell game” are what I was referring to. I hope you understand why I would disagree with them. RETI has nothing to do with the siting of greenpath or sunrise. Zero.

   The process is ongoing, open and public and not complete. I think you and others are incorrectly taking the zone identification to be the final word. It is not. RETI Steering Committee members are coming to Palm Desert at the invitation of some county supervisors to brief them on our work and next steps and to hear their concerns first hand. We believe this is proper and important. As RETI stakeholders, Johanna and I (and other steering committee members) urged that we meet with the public too.

   On disturbed lands, as I mentioned there was disagreement, but most of it was directed toward how we would define such lands and what data we would use in our mapping. AG lands were a touchy subject, to be sure. The definition and mapping of disturbed lands was a lot tougher though. We knew that two key issues would need to be dealt with in Phase II: issues we could not map in phase I such as the 1% cap on development on some BLM lands (which were mapped as restricted but not off-limits, as BLM asked to do) and other environmental and perhaps cultural factors. We also are using both satellite data and site visits to identify problems with zones and their relationship to disturbed sites. Good news: we found some ideal sites. Bad news: there are some ownership fragmentation issues to address, and we are working to sort them out. As I mentioned, some CREZ will be dropped, others will be shrunk and others could be moved. Phase I was the beginning. And no project can be approved without passing CEQA and NEPA reviews as appropriate. Even if an issue is missed it is likely to be caught at this stage, as John White alluded to on the radio program.

   People are jumping to conclusions about sunrise and greenpath. RETI simply assumes that some line proposed to serve these resources and markets is likely to be built by these sponsors connecting these places, but not where they will be built. Remember, we are not regulators; the regulators are handling these issues and we are involved in those processes as you know. We have n reason to ignore the fact that there is an approval process underway. The Sierra Club has helped lead the fight against Sunrise and is working with many partners to find a better solution to the Greenpath issue. Disagreements between public and investor owned utilities are making this harder, but this is also far from over, as you know. RETI has no dog in that hunt. Nor should it.

   Finally, I repeat: RETI is not a regulatory process, nor do we want it to be. It is intended to guide development to the most economically viable and environmentally preferable places we can collectively identify. It represents all stakeholders, and we are a key part of that effort. In fact, this is the first time environmental issues have ever been treated with equal concern with economic issues in transmission planning. That is a very significant fact. We are doing something that has never been done before and striving to get it right. Your criticism is not unwelcome. It is part of the process and proper. We need your help. Speaking for myself, I simply want to be sure that people fairly understand what it is we are doing why we are doing it, and how we are going about it. We may disagree about whether the premise is faulty; I strongly disagree that no new large scale renewables are needed. I sincerely hope none of your readers disagree that there is a Climate crisis we are confronting, and that all people have a responsibility to address it, from how we use energy to how we generate it. RETI is part of trying to assume, not avoid that responsibility.

   But RETI is NOT going to recommend lines that are not needed, and no one wants to waste resources building unnecessary lines. All the work we have done so far has reduced the likelihood of unnecessary lines being built and in the wrong locations. The process is not over, and we will continue this work, hopefully with your help and the help of your readers. We need a good outcome, and I believe by working with the other stakeholders we will get one. Failure will mean grave long term environmental harm, not only to the desert but all wild places we care about.

   Thanks for hearing me out and I look forward to working with all of you, both within RETI and in other fora. I regret I have not been able to join the discussion sooner. Parenthetically Jo and I are planning, with other RETI stakeholders, other site visits across the region. This is the first but not the last. We are looking especially for disturbed lands, hopefully near existing infrastructure, we can help guide projects and transmission to. Please contact us with ideas and we will try and schedule a trip with you to explore these areas and revisit the zones if necessary.

   Carl Zichella

7. By Joan Taylor on Jan 7, 2009

   This is a healthy dialogue, thanks Larry for the post. As a leader of Sierra Club desert activists who are fighting global climate change I’m concerned about developing renewable energy the wrong way, and giving it a black eye in the process. I’m interested to hear that you, Carl, have “raised the point about reduced loads from retiring fossil or expiring long term contracts too.” The problem is that, as far as I can tell, RETI still hasn’t done this threshold analysis. Again, I have to ask why RETI didn’t crunch these numbers at the outset, rather than just assuming that Sunrise Powerlink and Green Path North are needed and “approved” new transmission, and at no cost! This is one of RETI’s fundamental flaws.

   Furthermore, while I concur that we cannot achieve all our long term renewable energy goals exclusively with distributed photovoltaic generation at urban load centers, it is nonetheless abundantly clear that distributed photovoltaic (PV) can be a vastly larger segment of power production than RETI has been willing to admit. The only RETI estimates I can find predict that distributed PV will provide only 7% of the 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy needed to meet RETI’s 33% renewable goals. This estimate is laughable, given California’s sunny climate, what other nations have achieved with rooftop PV, and the fact that California is quickly moving towards adopting a “feed-in tariff” to reward deployment of distributed PV.

   We activists have repeatedly asked for RETI to give distributed PV a level playing field. If RETI were to simply use the SCE thin-film PV pricing and adjust capital cost to reflect that IOUs now get the same federal tax credit and accelerated depreciation that third parties get, the cheapest solution to reaching the state’s 33% renewable standard by 2020 is smaller PV power plants located at the substations. The obvious real direct-to-grid alternative, concentrating 20- megawatt PV projects in the urban and suburban cores, was not fairly evaluated in the RETI’s recent Phase 1B report. In fact, RETI arbitrarily excluded lands adjacent to urban areas from its consideration.

   In my opinion, RETI’s refusal to give the direct-to-grid PV alternative a fair shake constitutes a disservice to the desert, which is threatened by incredibly massive solar installations and new high-tension power line corridors primarily to be located on pristine public lands. It’s also a disservice to consumers who should not have to pay for costly new transmission when cheaper and more reliable distributed PV alternatives have yet to be fairly evaluated.

   Carl, I’ve heard your standard response about it taking 100 years for PV to meet RETI’s goals at 200 megawatts a year, and I have to take issue with it. I respectfully suggest that, instead of dismissing distributed PV, Sierra Club has a duty to become the most visible proponent of feed-in tariffs, so that California can be like Germany and develop thousands a megawatts of distributed PV a year – and we need to do this immediately, before enormous mirror arrays and transmission lines make renewable energy seem like just another exploitive industry with the consumer (and our public lands) footing the bill, when Joe Public could have been making money off his rooftop instead. Thanks for your ear.

8. By Tim Larson on Jan 7, 2009

   According to Amory Lovins in “Soft Energy Paths” a huge amount of power is wasted during transmission and distribution.

   We all know that the infrastructure needs work. Could (or would, or should) the $1.9B earmarked for the the Sunrise PowerStink be better used to repair, maintain and upgrade existing T&D equipment?. Wouldn’t that create more jobs and positively impact more people?. After all it takes far more people to transmit and distribute power than it does to make it. And better T&D (not more) would affect the whole state (for example if CA didn’t need power it could better be shipped elsewhere).

   As far as the Transmission of Renewable Energy, why do that at all when we don’t have to. That is the true genius of rooftop solar: we can make high quality power right at home. And in CA we can make it best when we need it most. With no T&D issues.

   And PV is reliable.

   Those big concentrating solar arrays are not reliable (high temperatures, high pressures, moving parts, OMG they have dipsticks! etc.). Reliability is measured in hours. PV panels on the other hand have no moving parts, run at rooftop temps and reliability is measured in decades (new rooftop inverters have 120 YEAR mean-time-between-failure ratings).

   So you can have an unreliable, centralized, expensive, and essentially experimental system, that still only works during daylight hours (maybe), and that will never put a penny in your pocket…

   OR panels on roofs that will (eventually) pay real money to the people that own those roofs. And that is existing roofs using existing T&D and proven technology.

   When someone needs a organ transplant the doctors interview the patient… if the patient drinks and smokes and refuses to stop, they wouldn’t get the organ, right?. Building new power plants is like transplanting an unhealthy heart into a body that refuses to quit drinking and smoking. Transmitting solar electricity is like transplanting a kids heart into a grown unhealthy person, it’s a good heart but not the right recipient.

   A watt (unit of heat) is a watt no matter where it comes from. And every one of those watts contributes to global warming. Less watts, less warming.

   Just say “no” to more power. We don’t need it. We have too much already. We have all collectively left the heaters on and the front doors open.

   Folks, the low hanging fruit has not been picked. In fact I believe there is fruit on the ground that has yet to be recognized as fruit.

   One thought/word/deed could end most (if not all) of the socioeconomic and environmental problems on this planet… Conservation.

   Tim Larson, Cloverdale, California, Earth.

9. By sheila on Jan 7, 2009

   Larry,

   Thanks for bringing this up, and Joan, thanks for helping to get so many of our longstanding positions into this dialogue. To anyone who takes more than a soundbyte approach to renewable energy (solar=good), point of use solutions are not only the most sensible from an energy perspective (grid reliability, decongestion, no transmission losses), but also from an environmental and economic perspective.

   I have run the numbers with professionals in the renewable energy industry and the solution is crystal clear: rather than waste $100 billion hard-earned ratepayer dollars to build 20,000 MW of wilderness-killing, wasteful, toxic and unneeded infrastructure which will be privately owned by Big Energy interests and used to manipulate supplies and pricing, that $100 billion would be FAR better used as a LOAN fund for AB 811 loans, repayable through the property tax system.

   This would enable roughly 25,000 MW of clean, harmless, efficient rooftop solar to be generated with no dead wilderness, no families forced from their homes, no GHG emissions, no blighted viewsheds, no transmission losses, no destruction of effective carbon sinks (like the Mojave), no billions of wasted gallons of water, and no re-entrenchment of Big Energy monopolies.

   In fact, once paired with feed in tariffs, 3 to 5 MILLION ratepayer generators (CA residents) would be receiving monthly checks, and have vastly improved property values, while implementing self-imposed cuts in consumption (FITs are more effective in encouraging conservation than any other policy, including raising rates). Economic stimulus that doesn’t kill the planet! Tens of thousands more CA residents would have well-paid manufacturing and installation jobs. Thousands more would have their views and natural playgrounds saved and/or be allowed to remain in their family homes. At least 600,000 acres of mostly public lands will be left intact for the uses they are intended to serve. And the free market and democracy will get a chance to flourish.

   As that first $100 billion is repaid, perhaps it can be used to offset the incremental difference between peaker wholesale rates (~ 30 cents/kwh) and “incentive tariff rates” (~ 50 cents/kwh), which will more than ensure oversizing of systems, rapid scaling of rooftop PV and fair compensation for ratepayers who do the right thing – produce more clean energy than they consume on previously developed land.

   We could, in fact, have more than 500 BILLION kilowatt hours of clean, green power in the system, 600,000 saved acres of effective carbon-absorbing, functioning ecosystem, billions of saved gallons of water, and widespread economic stimulus for the same price as the privatized Robber Baron infrastructure RETI proposes, before that infrastructure feeds a single watt into our grid.

   You have consistently expressed doubts, Mr. Zichella, about rapid scaling of PV but the facts show otherwise. Germany, Spain and Japan’s feed in tariff programs are consistently over-subscribed, even at the current 2,000 MW/year levels and every dollar of AB 811 money made available so far (millions) was snapped up within days, if not hours. EVERYBODY WANTS SOLAR PANELS ON THEIR ROOFS, and no amount of looking backwards at failed CA policies, like the CA Solar Initiative will change that. You and others at CEERT continue to use the “no energy source is without impact” talking point, which intentionally blurs the line between “total ecosystem destruction with enormous GHG emissions and water waste” promoted by RETI and “very very small impacts” of rooftop solar. These distinctions are not lost on thinking or caring people, and, with respect, make CEERT look ignorant, dishonest or both.

   I’m sorry, but there is literally NO excuse for anyone but the most mercenary of profiteers to advocate killing wilderness as a first resort, when there are much better, cheaper, greener, and fairer solutions ready to go RIGHT NOW. As for long-term goals, why don’t we see how the hydrogen energy storage process evolves at MIT, how conservation/ efficiency and smart grid tech evolves, and how other technology evolves once the focus is placed on point of use solutions rather than remote Industrial messes? All RETI needs to do is come up with 20,000 MW, and that can be done with 3 simple policies which are already successful in many places:

   1. Guaranteed financing, repayable through the property tax system;

   2. Generous feed in tariffs which make payback time less than 7 years and reward conservation;

   3. Expansion of the CSI program to encourage oversizing of systems and extension of benefits to meet the RETI benchmarks.

   Sierra Club and NRDC have an opportunity to reassess the situation in light of the facts, and to start advocating for policies that will rapidly, affordably, and fairly increase renewable energy generation, will reduce GHGs far more, and will preserve all our open spaces. If these goals do not conform to RETI’s goals, then perhaps RETI’s goals are beneath what California deserves. By putting their stamp of approval on the level of pointless destruction to our fragile ecosystems that RETI espouses, these organizations will be completely discredited, so I hope, for everyone’s sake that this kind of reversal will be swift and public.

   Thanks for hearing us out.

10. By Austin on Jan 8, 2009

    I greatly appreciate the dialogue that is happening here; I wish it had occurred 12-18 months ago. I must however, take issue with the statement that “no one has been excluded from the process”. Those most impacted by the dramatic changes proposed for land use in the Mohave Desert have indeed been excluded. Where are the landowners? Where are the small town governments, or the County governments? Where are the local environmental groups?

    As a landowner who will lose my land if Green Path North is built as the LADWP envisions, I deeply resent having no representation among the decision-making process. I can do nothing but provide “public comments” during an EIR process– the same as a foreign-owned energy corporation can do. Is this an “open and transparent” process?

11. By Kevin Emmerich on Jan 9, 2009

    “But we also need large-scale, appropriately sited solar resources to prevent the full brunt of global warming from destroying all the resources we care about and have fought so hard to protect. Failing to do this will mean the loss of Joshua trees and peninsula bighorn sheep and other desert species, as well as the submersion of coastal wetlands, the deterioration of giant sequoia forests, the extinction of high-elevation species, the loss of water from diminishing Sierra snow pack further degrading our aquatic ecosystems and imperiled fish populations, and worsening air pollution damaging the health of millions of our people and harming ecosystems at all elevations.”

    My issue is with the above style of fear mongering that Mr. Zichella’s uses to try to sell his point of view without really addressing the amount of fossil fuels that will be needed to be used to back up this industrial green energy. His doom scenarios of climate change will only be quickened by the construction of large projects such as the Ivanpah Solar Facility which will require the burning of carbon releasing natural gas to keep it running at night time. Just about every other large facility like this will have a similar scenario.

    The outcome and specifics of the effects of climate change just can not be accurately predicted. While we should be cleaning up our energy use, we should not allow knee jerk predictions of the extinction of Joshua trees or bighorn scare us into believing that we need to dig up and kill half of the Joshua trees to try and save the other half. There really is no way Zichella can know all this. If you talk to most climate scientists, they will even tell you that it is very hard to predict the exact outcome of what climate change will actually do to particular ecosystems. We should not be jumping to conclusions so a large energy company can cash in on a new Wall Street economy. So we should take some time to evaluate how we can make energy clean in a way that will not inflict the kind of destruction on desert ecosystems that Zichella is so willing to agree to. We already have had the answer for years. Roof tops, parking lots, every disturbed area in the southwest really. The Sierra Club should be supporting clean energy in a way that prioritizes the preservation of ecosystems and has the least impact possible, not stirring up panic based on uncertain science.

12. By Larry Hogue on Jan 9, 2009

    Thanks for the comment, Kevin. You’re right that the exact changes caused by global warming are hard to predict, but we also shouldn’t minimize the likely severity of those changes. We do need to move aggressively to stop climate change. But I think the physician’s principle is a good one: First, do no harm.

13. By Kevin Emmerich on Jan 9, 2009

    I’m not debating or undermining the issue of climate change, but I think it is dangerous to try to predict the exact outcome ie. decaring a timeline for a species extinction, especially when those predictions are used to sell the kind of industrial environmental genocide that large green industrial facilities will infict on our desert landscape forever. Let’s just not use a sexy sounding speculation to sell a big commercial project…

14. By sheila on Jan 12, 2009

    i think it’s interesting to note that even the US GOVERNMENT has clearly stated that brownfields located within our cities could easily supply 90% of the US energy needs:

    http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/myths.html

    there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER to support the dynamiting, scraping, paving, poisoning, depleting or dehydrating of a SINGLE ACRE of open space. no economic arguments hold water (as noted in my comment at the hearing, privately owned generation is provided at very low cost to ratepayers across the grid – modest CSI and FIT amounts with no transmission), and no environmental arguments do (as Kevin notes, these Industrial Solar, Wind and Geothermal plants will cause massive emissions).

    this is a total and complete sham, designed 100% to re-monopolize our grid in an era of ubiquitous sun and wind and we cannot allow it to happen.

15. By Robin Bell, Carrisa Alliance for Responsible Energy on Feb 1, 2009

    Larry, I have yet to review the impressive accumulation of comments your post generated as I feel instead compelled to add my own immediately.

    This sentence you wrote gave me chills: “The rational approach would require these projects to be built on already disturbed lands (such as abandoned farmland), near existing transmission lines and water sources.” This is exactly the argument that is being used by big energy to promote massive development of utility scale solar on the Carrisa Plain.

    The Carrizo National Monument is located on a portion of the Carrisa Plain. We are home to five Federally Endangered species and many more state and federal special status species. We arguably have the highest concentration of special status species in the state. The plain is a migration corridor considered crucial to the recovery of a fully protected species and is a primary foraging ground for the California Condor. We support rare game populations for which the state has spent considerable effort and taxpayer money to re-establish. Endangered and threatened plant life also thrives on this “abandoned farm” ground. We have all this in a relatively small area, about 40 miles long by 15 miles wide. There is very sparse development.

    We also happened to have transmission lines with some room on them since PG&E conveniently shut down the Morro Bay natural gas plant. Our land is cheaper than the neighboring developed San Joaquin Valley and we don’t have as much oil potential so our mineral rights are affordable. And, our sunshine is 10% more productive than the valley’s. All of this results in the same kind of attack your facing. And it’s justified by exactly the argument you made; much of it (at some point or another) has been disturbed farmland, it is close to transmission lines and has water (not according to us but so the solar developers say so). And, people are buying into their hype.

    Now the plain is much more my cup of tea than your desert but I would never presume to say “Don’t put your power plant on the plain. Put it in the desert. It has lots of room with nothing there.” I would not be so careless as to make such an ignorant remark.

    Larry, I feel your pain as we are facing the same battle but, man, don’t throw us under the bus!

16. By Larry Hogue on Feb 2, 2009

    Thanks for your comment, Robin. Let me point out that the post doesn’t say that all abandoned farm land is appropriate for development. The unique characteristics of each site need to be taken into account. From the little I know about the Carrizo Plain, it seems like it offers better habitat than some of the abandoned and fallowed fields in the Imperial Valley, for instance.

    But as a general rule used in planning, if there has to be a choice, then already disturbed (I mean really disturbed, not what BrightSource for instance calls disturbed) lands need to be given priority over pristine or relatively undisturbed habitats.

    The Desert Protective Council’s position is that we are a long way from having to make such choices, despite the current land rush for large solar and wind sites. These large-scale, non-building-integrated solar projects should be done only as a last resort. There are good arguments, and DPC has made some of them, that they won’t need to be done at all, if we can give appropriate priority to conservation, energy efficiency, and Building Integrated Solar. Those approaches should be able to meet our current 33% renewables mandate on their own, if they had the right incentives and momentum behind them equal to the Big Renewables push.

    The best argument against the large-scale PV projects in the Carrizo Plain is, “why not put those same panels on buildings and parking lots throughout the Bay Area and urbanized parts of the San Joaquin Valley?”

1. 2 Trackback(s)

2. Jan 8, 2009: Change to RETI Meeting Location | DesertBlog
3. Jan 9, 2009: More on RETI's CREZy Idea | DesertBlog

Sorry, comments for this entry are closed at this time.