DesertBlog

Big Renewables Debate Continues

The debate over the benefits and impacts of Big Renewables continues in Washington, in the media, and here on DesertBlog.

MARCH 24th UPDATE: Today a big article appeared in the New York Times on conflicts between environmentalists over renewable energy. The article featured a proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein to protect over a thousand square miles of the Mojave Desert from industrial development, including renewable energy. Much of this land, located in a swath between Joshua Tree National Park and the Mojave National Preserve, was thought to already have been protected when the Wildlands Conservancy made an historic purchase of Catellus railroad properties and transferred them to the Bureau of Land Management. Feinstein’s proposal is similar to the Wildlands Conservancy’s own “Mother Road Monument” proposal, which Chris Clarke has covered on Coyote Crossing. While these proposals won’t protect all of the desert lands we’re concerned about, Feinstein’s swift action shows that people in Washington are beginning to understand that renewable energy has impacts like any other industrial development. It’s a ray of light in what Gidon points out (in a comment below) is a very depressing picture.

U.S. Representative Brian Bilbray has joined Dana Rohrabacher in calling for solar farms to be exempted from environmental review. You might want to call Bilbray to tell him why that’s a bad idea: 202-225-0508 or 858-350-1150. The bill under consideration is HR 964.

Our previous post, “Problems with Big Desert Solar,” has received more comments than any other DesertBlog post, much of it centering on whether photovoltaic solar panels really produce more energy than it takes to create them. The short answer is that they do, by far. More details here. Another good article promoting the promise of PV solar energy came out late last year in Scientific American.

And while we spend a lot of time debating which type of renewable energy is better, Bill Powers says we can cut our energy-related carbon footprint by 20% almost overnight.  How? Simply by turning on all of the moth-balled natural gas-fired power plants in various parts of the country, and shutting down a similar capacity of coal-fired power plants. Bill’s PowerPoint presentation containing this and many other surprising facts on energy production and transmission is available here.

To sort a lot of this out, we’ve put together a Big Renewables fact sheet in question and answer format. It lays out the reasons the desert is a place worth saving — not an empty, barren waste land — and describes what we think is a sensible, realistic, and conservation-oriented approach to reducing our energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. You can find it here.

Meanwhile, Salon.com has a good article today on the ugly side of “green transmission,” with quotes from our friends at the Center for Biological Diversity and the Alliance for Responsible Energy Policy. 

And speaking of transmission (though not renewable energy per se ), there’s a new group in Lakeside that is speaking out against the non-renewable Sunrise Powerlink. They call themselves the East County Community Action Coalition and their website is here.