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Home Front Economy
BLM Reverses Moratorium On Solar Power Proposals
2008-07-03
Follow-up.
SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- The federal government is again accepting applications to build new solar power plants on public land, reversing a previous moratorium on new projects, a key agency said Wednesday. The Bureau of Land Management said it will keep its doors open for new proposals while it studies how large solar plants might affect the environment of undeveloped areas of California and the Southwest. The agency had said last week it would put a hold on new applications pending its environmental review.

"By continuing to accept and process new applications for solar energy projects, we will aggressively help meet growing interest in renewable energy sources, while ensuring environmental protections," James Caswell, the agency's director, said in a statement.

In the last three years, solar companies have filed 125 proposals with the agency to lease public land for solar projects. The projects would cover almost a million acres and could power as many as 20 million homes, according to the bureau. Plants have been proposed using two different technologies: concentrating collectors and tilted photovoltaic panels.
Posted by:Steve White

#4  The desert ecosystem is easily harmed. Because it has the outward appearance of lifelessness, people think it is impervious to any disruption. This is total numbskullery, why do you need a million acres worth of solar panels? If you want solar energy, spend $20,000 and convert your house. These guys want to spend $200million to make a peaking station.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2008-07-03 10:51  

#3  actually both proposed methods (the tilting plates and the collectors) have design templates that shade less than 50% of the surface; thus the ecological effects will be much less than a total shading

however, given the relatively small physical footprint of a nuclear reactor, it is logical that nukes be preferred on an ecological basis (of course a lot of enviros oppose nukes but that's because of other things)

Posted by: mhw   2008-07-03 10:01  

#2  if theres an environmental danger, then they can address that in the review process. No good reason for a moratorium.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2008-07-03 09:52  

#1  If you are an animal or plant that lives in that desert, those solar panels will provide areas of permanent shade and completely change the environment. You are going to see the growth of non-native grasses, for example, living on the shade the panels provide and the water that is going to be used to wash the dust off of them.

It will absolutely destroy the natural desert environment under those panels. But destruction of environment is good if it is solar. An oil well pumping quietly away in the desert would not change the environment any more than a Joshua tree would.

What a bunch of morons. And by the time you get that power delivered someplace where it can be used from out there in the desert, you have lost a good bit of it in transmission losses. Expensive, inefficient, environmentally destructive to place and destructive to manufacture.

Put a fast neutron reactor out there that doesn't use water for coolant and get a gigawatt of power 24x7x365.
Posted by: crosspatch   2008-07-03 02:16  

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