Energy plan calls for big renewables projects in state’s deserts

Industrial-scale solar, wind and geothermal projects could be built within a few miles of national parks in the California desert as part of the Obama and Brown administrations’ efforts to combat climate change, under a mammoth plan released by federal and state officials Tuesday.

Construction of the plants, many of which could cover several square miles, would drastically alter desert vistas near national parks and wilderness areas, according to a draft of the Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, a joint state and federal project more than five years in the making.

But that would be offset by the climate-change benefits of allowing large solar and wind energy plants on more than 2million acres of the Mojave Desert, the report said.

The 8,000-page plan covers 22.5million acres of public and private land in the California desert, and was unveiled in Palm Springs by Interior Secretary Sally Jewell with Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and top state land management, energy and wildlife officials.

Potential new solar and wind projects would “impose dramatic visual changes to high-value recreational areas,” the plan acknowledges. More than 40 percent of the development areas are within 5 miles of legally protected areas, including Death Valley and Joshua Tree national parks and the Mojave National Preserve.

Boxer’s backing

“I treasure the desert,” said Boxer, chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and an ardent advocate of action against climate change. “We’re going to go where we have to go to get the energy, and we’re not going to go where we can’t go because we have to protect this God-given environment.”

“What we now have is a road map,” said Jewell, who said the plan would allow renewable-energy plants in the areas of “least conflict” and preserve “areas that should never be developed.”

California Natural Resources Secretary John Laird indicated that Gov. Jerry Brown supports the plan.

National environmental groups have generally supported large-scale renewable energy development in the desert. But as plants have come online and more near approval, local communities and activist groups have moved sharply in opposition, arguing that the state and federal governments should put more focus on smaller-scale projects and put utility-scale solar plants on degraded farmland in the Central Valley and Imperial County.

Barbara Boyle, a senior campaign representative for the Sierra Club, called the plan promising. She said there would be continued debate about where to build large plants.

Protecting bighorn

The desert plan would set aside 4million acres of conservation areas to protect habitat and migration corridors. It would increase protection for 37 threatened or endangered species such as the desert tortoise and desert bighorn sheep, as well as 31 types of desert ecosystems.

It would create a 5-mile buffer for three historic and protected trails: the Pacific Crest Trail, a hiking route that runs from the Mexican border to Canada; the Old Spanish Trail, a historic trade route that connected Santa Fe, N.M., with Los Angeles; and the Juan Bautista de Anza Trail, marking the path of the 1775 Spanish expedition that ended with the establishment of the future city of San Francisco.

The plan attempts to meet President Obama’s goal of generating 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy on public lands, along with California’s efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by mid-century.

Fixing mistakes

While emphasizing that large-scale renewable energy plants are “a top priority” for the Obama and Brown administrations, the plan attempts to correct mistakes made during the pell-mell “solar land rush” during Obama’s first year in office, when billions of dollars in federal stimulus money helped build solar and wind projects on untouched desert land.

The most prominent example is the 5.4-square-mile Ivanpah solar plant built by BrightSource Energy of Oakland off Interstate 15 north of the Mojave National Preserve. Many more desert tortoises were discovered on the site than was anticipated, and problems have emerged with birds being incinerated when they fly in the path of the concentrated solar radiation.

David Lamfrom, California desert program manager for the National Parks and Conservation Association, said the plan could be an improvement over the current system of scattershot development. But he said officials appear to have left in limbo several controversial proposals, including a 23-square-mile wind and solar plant in the Silurian Valley just south of Death Valley and a 3,000-acre solar plant at Soda Mountain, atop a bighorn sheep corridor near the Mojave National Preserve.

Kevin Emmerich, a former Death Valley park ranger who founded the watchdog site Basin and Range Watch, said officials are “calling this a conservation plan while they are planning on fragmenting up the large remaining sections of the California desert into 'development zones’ and 'conservation zones,’ which ultimately translates to a net loss of desert habitat.”

Rooftop solar

Emmerich said planners have refused to consider rooftop solar and other smaller-scale projects that “would actually produce energy at the point of use without transmission loss and save habitat.”

But Mark Tholke, a vice president at EDF Renewables, an energy company that has built plants in the desert, said rooftop solar is inadequate to address climate change.

“Many of us feel a real urgency to get as many (plants) up and running as possible, as soon as possible,” Tholke said. To slow climate change, he said, “we need to do a lot more than rooftop and distributed generation. We need cost-effective, large projects .”