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CSP Proponents
Must Consider Impact on Wilderness
[Regarding Chuck Kutscher’s article, “Concentrating Solar
to the Rescue,” in the April issue], while concentrated solar
power (CSP) is a great technology in need of public support,
we must not fall into the mindset that all solar development
is good, no matter where. Like any industry, solar will find
boundaries it must live within.
The desert Southwest may seem like a wasteland to many
or a “solar resource,” but it is an area of critical environmental concern, especially Southern California’s Mojave Desert,
which is almost completely public land managed by the Bureau
of Land Management (BLM) and, to a lesser extent, by the
National Park Service. Huge areas of wild land provide critical habitat for many plants and animals found nowhere else,
and much of the land is rare wilderness in an urban state. The
Mojave Desert already faces pressure from destructive off-road
vehicles, sprawl and military expansion.
These lands could now face massive solar industrial development. The BLM has 130 applications for solar facilities on
1 million acres of public wild lands in the Mojave Desert. CSP
plants require the complete destruction of the natural habitat
beneath them, and the electrical generation lines and roads that
radiate from them can spoil many more acres, especially when
many CSP plants are scattered over a wide area.
The answer may be to spare most public lands from CSP
development and concentrate these plants near urban areas on
burned-out farm lands or on abandoned industrial or military
sites. By keeping the plants together, we can consolidate power
lines and roads and keep the open spaces and wildlife habitats
of the Mojave Desert protected for future generations, who will
need both solar power and wilderness.
Tom Ribe
Santa Fe, N.M.
tribe@swadventures.com
Chuck Kutscher’s response:
Mr. Ribe makes valid points about an important issue. As
an Edward Abbey fan with a love for the desert, I share his
environmental concerns. CSP deployment has the potential
for significant land impact in those areas that have the highest
solar resources and that are near transmission lines. Environmental studies are looking at ways to protect the desert tortoise
and other fauna and flora. Air and hybrid air/wet cooling are
viable ways to conserve precious water resources. The Western
Governors’ Association and the Bureau of Land Management
are addressing environmental sensitivity in evaluating areas
for solar and wind development. One thing we can do is target
land that has already been disturbed from mining, agriculture
and other activities, as Ribe suggests. There are studies under
way that are looking at the potential for solar fields to displace
large amounts of fossil fuel at
existing fossil-fired power plants
utilizing industrial land adjacent
to the plants. We need to also
investigate alternative solar collector deployment methods that
minimize land disruption.
At the same time, we should
recognize that every new clean
energy technology will have some
environmental impact. Climate
models consistently show that
the desert Southwest will suffer
worsening drought due to climate change, with serious consequences for desert ecosystems. Concentrating solar power
with thermal storage is one of the most promising technologies
for rapidly providing dispatchable, carbon-free power to the
electric grid. It’s important that the solar power industry work
closely with environmentalists to deploy collector systems in
the most environmentally benign way. A good precedent is
the collaboration between the Audubon Society and the wind
industry. Wind projects are now sited at locations that avoid
bird migration routes. Although there is still a small amount
of bird mortality associated with wind turbines, the Audubon
Society has recognized that intelligently deployed wind power
will help save a much greater number of birds by mitigating
climate change. ST
raNdy MoNtoya, Sa Ndia NatioNal laboratorieS
Supporters of concentrating solar power plants
should consider the effects
the plants could have on
wildlife and wilderness in
the desert Southwest, a
reader points out.
Corrections
In “Carbon Regulation:
What’s the Most Effective
Path?” due to an editing
error, the vertical axis of
the chart “Historical Global
Carbon Dioxide Emissions”
showed increments of 1,000
million metric tons of CO
2
(June issue, page 38). The
vertical-axis increments
should have been 5,000
each, with the curve reaching just under 30,000 million
metric tons of CO in 2004.
2
In the same article, due to
a production error, the left
side of the chart “Proposed
Emission-Reduction Targets” was cut off (page 39).
It is reproduced here.
