Knowledge is Power

Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the “power tower” emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket.

…looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the [2012], they will become six square miles of gleaming reflectors, sweeping from Interstate 15 to the Clark Mountains along California’s eastern border.

That’s six square miles of dead desert floor.

Industrial-scale solar development is well underway in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. The federal government has furnished more public property to this cause than it has for oil and gas exploration over the last decade — 21 million acres, more than the area of Los Angeles, Riverside and San Bernardino counties put together.

…$2-billion plant …3,500 acres of public land …capable of generating 370 megawatts, enough to power roughly 140,000 homes during peak hours.

Even if only a few of the proposed projects are built, hundreds of square miles of wild land will be scraped clear. Several thousand miles of power transmission corridors will be created.

The desert will be scarred well beyond a human life span, and no amount of mitigation will repair it, according to scores of federal and state environmental reviews.

…Schwarzenegger freed large solar plants from property tax and handed out $90 million in exemptions from sales and use taxes. Under Gov. Jerry Brown, the state invested more than $70 million in clean energy research last year, funded by a ratepayer surcharge.

…BrightSource’s Ivanpah facility is expected to employ … 86 full-time maintenance and facility workers once it is up and running

140,000 homes … 3,500 acres …$2-billion …86 JOBS

The Department of Defense also has raised questions. The Pentagon has the China Lake weapons testing facility, Ft. Irwin, Edwards Air Force Base, Twentynine Palms Marine base and the Chocolate Mountain Naval Aerial Gunnery Range.

The military, whose pilots often trace the contours of the desert floor from 200 feet, is concerned about maneuvering around 460-foot solar towers. The Marines have asked the companies for more information about the glare produced by a vast carpet of solar reflectors.

The Federal Aviation Administration has voiced concerns about the heat plume rising from the Ivanpah towers and about the installation’s possible radar interference.

Unintended consequences.

“These are big businesses chasing federal dollars — they don’t care if they fail. They got what they want.”

They’re “”gentle mowing” the desert plants so they will fit under the mirrors — where they will get no sunlight and die. They are catching desert tortoises and putting them in pens “pending relocation.” [remember how that worked out for the "No Otter Zone"?] And they’re creating another fake land boom.

Desolate acreage that a few years ago might have sold for less than $500 an acre can now fetch as much as $20,000 an acre, according to land brokers in the region. Farmers are also getting in on the action. Alfalfa and cotton fields are being converted to solar and wind farms as the industry’s big players put together mega-deals.

…Less than 17% of the Mojave’s 20 million acres is private property.

…some developers prefer private property, even at high prices, because public land carries a thick sediment of bureaucracy: a snarl of federal and state environmental laws that requires time-consuming and expensive analysis before the first shovel of dirt is turned.

…The Ivanpah Solar Project, for example, requires … 7,000 acres to replace habitat for the threatened desert tortoise.

This ought work out well…