Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 08/05/2009 10:13:18 AM PDT by reaganaut1
Tessera Solar plans to plant 34,000 solar dishes — each one 40 feet high and 38 feet wide — on 8,230 acres of the Mojave Desert in Southern California.
Although the lengthy licensing process for the Calico solar farm remains in the early stages, several environmental groups are already raising red flags about the massive project’s impact on such protected wildlife as the desert tortoise, the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and Nelson’s bighorn sheep.
Calico is one of dozens of industrial-scale solar farms planned for the Southwest that have divided environmentalists over the need to promote renewable energy while protecting fragile desert ecosystems.
...
The solar farm would generate 850 megawatts of electricity for Southern California Edison.
Also jumping into the fray is a well-funded labor group that is pressing solar developers to employ union workers, and the Wildlands Conservancy, a Southern California non-profit that supports a proposal by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, to ban renewable energy development on hundreds of thousands of acres of the Mojave adjacent to Calico.
Most of the land for the solar farm would be leased from the federal government.
...
The labor group, called California Unions for Reliable Energy, sent an attorney and biologist to testify at the hearing. The group has come under fire for inundating developers who decline to sign labor agreements with demands that they conduct scores of costly environmental studies on their solar projects.
California Unions for Reliable Energy has taken a particularly aggressive stance in the Calico case, dispatching its own biologist to investigate the project site. At the hearing, the biologist, Scott Cashen, accused Tessera Solar of providing scientifically invalid data in its license application as well as underestimating the solar farm’s consequences for wildlife.
(Excerpt) Read more at greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com ...
I love it when environmentalists cannibalize their own.
Sumtin fishy here.
Lol.....Tell the environazis to stop using the web, cars, buses, telephone, TV, hot water....
Hippies idea of solar power is hanging a black pot outside your yurt to make luke warm water to take a sponge bath once a month.
” Sumtin fishy here. “
[from the article]
” desert tortoise, the Mojave fringe-toed lizard and Nelson’s bighorn sheep “
Nope - don’t see anything about ‘fish’.....
The holy trinity of the left -- environmentalists, unions, and lawyers, are going to make have made energy very expensive.
Corrected. And it's the same modus operandus that they used to drive up the cost of nuclear power plants. Eventually, sane people are going to start tarring and feathering these luddites.
You could generate as much on a couple hundred acres using any other technology. Nat gas, and you'd have almost zero emissions, nuke and you'd have none at all.
Solar farms are extremely wasteful of land, as are wind farms. Solar's best use is as a niche producer for remote locations and rooftop power generation to take the edge off of peak usage times.
Exactly. How big a working pad did they ask for in ANWR? Just a few acres out of 19 million.
The unions should sue the environmentalists. Look at it as a stimulus program for the lawyers.
I find this hard to believe. Even in a clear-air desert environment, solar isn't going to do much better than about a 40% capacity factor (night, sun angle, dust, occasional clouds, etc.). My guess is the reporters are being their usual lazy, sloppy selves, reporting nameplate capacity as if it were actual continuous output.
Do not forget maintenance of the 34,000 solar dishes. The maintenance requires lots of labor, cleaning supplies, and probably water. I have a friend is involved in contract negotiations on this project. Apparently maintenance was not budgeted in the original contracts.
I wonder what the environmental in pact of large amounts of Windex is?
Real environmentalists (like me!) have known this was coming. Solar power sounds great at small scale. When it is ramped up to the size needed to really contribute to national energy needs, it looks very ugly indeed. Ditto for wind.
Nuclear energy is the only truly environmentally friendly solution available. Especially looking ahead the huge demand electric vehicles would put on the grid.
Talk about trashing the environment, solar panels and wind turbines are huge eyesores whereever they’re installed.
I would say build a nuke plant in the desert, but then you have the cooling issue.
The US Navy has been producing safe Nuke power for years, I see no problem with %100 of the us power coming from nuke plants, we have plenty of trained sailors that would be happy to retire and run a power plant.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.