Solar Energy on Public Lands Faces More Opposition

Solar Energy on Public Lands Faces More Opposition A while back, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated 670,000 acres of federal (public) lands in Nevada, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico as prime targets for large solar energy arrays due to their high solar insolation levels.The proposed solar fields would be utility-scale installations, and the impacts on regional ecospheres are causing concern among environmentalists and some state legislators. The most notable case so far is that of Dianne Feinstein (D-Cal.), whose opposition to solar in the Mojave Desert (by solar firm BrightSource) scrapped plans for that company’s proposed 5,130-acre concentrating solar power (CSP) project.The Interior Department, in its original study, identified 24 sites within the states mentioned above to develop said solar; sites which would require huge amounts of land, and water, to generate renewable solar electricity, and would further restrict any other type of development or use, including any recreational component.The key issue in the dispute seems to be public lands, i.e., those owned by the government, or those withdrawn from development and designated as parks, as well as those which contain critical habitat. Private lands don’t face the same onus; or, if they do, the hue and cry is less evident, except at a local level, and the permitting process infinitely easier.In Nevada, where the government owns 85 percent of the land, and solar insolation values range between 4.0 and 6.0 (in the southern portion of the state, on a scale of 2.0 to 9.0), the argument goes like this: “Why put solar hundreds of miles from the source of greatest use (i.e., the big cities of the north and Midwest)?”Destroying habitat and endangered species to save the planet from fossil-fuel emissions seems, to Terry Weiner of the Desert Protective Council, counterintuitive.Fortunately, the Wilderness Society has a more sensible point of view. As member Alex Daue notes, not siting solar on these lands will lead to more mountaintop-removal coal mining, oil drilling and gas exploration in these same states, with even more negative environmental effects. In Wyoming, highly desirable, sulfur-free coal accounts for about 40 percent of America’s annual coal supply).Duae and his group have had some success in convincing the Interior Department to select Western lands already degraded by former industrial, mining or farming activity, rather than areas of critical habitat. The group has also encouraged Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a Colorado native, to choose land near existing high-voltage transmission lines, so no land has to be withdrawn for constructing them.Rhone Resch, president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, argues in a similar vein, noting that America’s centralized electricity infrastructure can’t be rebuilt without industrial-scale solar installations, and the only place to put these is in the open spaces in the West.Rooftop solar is not enough, Resch notes reasonably, contrasting the 670,000 acres for solar with the oil and gas industry’s 44.5 million acres of leased public lands, a 2-percent fraction of the total which will never, even in worst-case scenarios, degrade the land as thoroughly or completely as coal, oil and gas extraction.One writer notes that environmentalists’ concerns may be based on continuing claims, by solar, for more and more land to erect solar farms, but the concern is unwarranted. A German research group has already established that 0.3 percent of the land in the Sahara Desert could supply 15 percent of the power needed in Europe. Extrapolated, this means that 20 percent of the Sahara Desert could provide power to all of Europe. Since the Sahara is 9 million square kilometers, or about 3.5 million square miles (or 2.2 billion acres), and the population of Europe 831 million, this means about 2.75 acres for each person. With a United States’ population of 305 million, this translates to about 839 million acres, a figure that could be greatly reduced by developing concentrating solar power, or CSP, with molted salt energy storage, which has an efficiency rating of 31.25 percent, or almost twice as much as the most efficient solar photovoltaic panels.In effect, withdrawing unused portions of Nevada (70 million acres), New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, Colorado and Utah could supply half of America’s generation mix via clean, renewable solar energy.