This cute desert tortoise enjoying the sun and flowers needs to move in order to make way for a new kind of flora in the Mojave desert: very environmentally friendly solar panel trees. Environmental regulations and countless required studies usually stymie the development of large-scale industrial projects, especially in pristine habitats of sensitive critters (and in California in general). However, “the looming expiration of crucial federal financial support for the multi-billion-dollar projects, though, could turn the boom to bust.” State approval of Mojave desert solar power farms is being fast-tracked in order to qualify for federal money, which will disappear due to the stimulus spigot being turned off, and the fact that the country is broke.
The scale of each “suncatcher”, the number going to be installed, and the vast amount of acreage required for each farm is simply astounding. Yet, the presence of federally threatened desert tortoises is not enough to stop the project; they’ll simply be moved somewhere else, and chances of survival are admittedly very low (see below). I wonder if the Central Valley farmers who are suffering from lack of water due to the Delta smelt will get fast track approval to use their barren moonscape farms for these same solar plants? How can the cute tortoises stand in the way of Progress and reducing carbon footprints?
From the Reptile Channel:
Supporters of BrightSource’s project, the Ivanpah Solar Energy Generating System, say the benefits of the project outweigh the potential negative environmental impact. According to BrightSource’s website, the solar thermal power plant will generate 1,000 jobs at the peak of construction and prevent 450,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.
From the La Times on the “tortoise roundup”:
Federal wildlife biologists said it was needed to make way for construction of BrightSource Energy’s 3,280-acre, 370-megawatt Ivanpah Solar Electric Generation System.
Without the roundup, an estimated 17 federally threatened tortoises — and an unknown number of half-dollar-sized hatchlings — in the 913-acre initial phase of the project would have been squashed by heavy equipment.
A total 36 adult tortoises are believed to inhabit the project site. “We can never say we got them all out of there — these are cryptic creatures,” said Roy Murray of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service desert tortoise recovery office.
Under a plan approved by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, as many tortoises as possible will be captured, weighed, measured, photographed, blood tested, fitted with radio transmitters and housed in quarantine pens with artificial burrows.
The tortoises will remain in the pens until they can be transported and released in natural settings elsewhere in the region determined to be free of disease and predators — a process expected to take several months.
Tortoise translocation is still an experimental strategy with a dismal track record. In previous efforts, transported tortoises have shown a tendency to wander, sometimes for miles, often back toward the habitat in which they were found. The stress of handling and adapting to unfamiliar terrain renders the reptiles vulnerable to potentially lethal threats: predation by dogs, ravens and coyotes; respiratory disease, dehydration and being hit by vehicles.
Here is more information about the absolutely stunning scale of these solar farms:
Resembling a giant mirrored satellite receiver, each Suncatcher stands 40 feet tall and 38 feet wide with a Stirling engine suspended on an arm over the center of the dish. As the dish tracks the sun, its mirrors concentrate sunlight on the hydrogen gas-filled heat engine. As the superheated gas expands, it drives pistons, which generates 25 kilowatts of electricity.
Now imagine planting 26,540 Suncatchers on 4,613 acres of federal land for the Calico project.
This is the result of AB32, the global warming law California still has on the books (Prop 23), which mandates the state receive an increasing percentage of electricity from renewable sources and a 25% reduction in emissions by 2020. Thousands of acres of these Suncatchers are required to meet those goals, regardless of whatever threatened species get in the way.
This is insane.
For every million they spend, they will add another million for back up power sources. They will add another million for grid, gathering and distribution. Then they will add another million for subsidies and pork.
On paper this green utopia will double your energy bill. The other half of the energy bill you will not see is the portion of energy spent and paid for on your tax return.
The US has enough uranium to last a long time. I don’t have a source, but if I remember correctly, the US has enough nuclear fuel to last over 100 years.
And then the waste. I’ve read that modern reactors produce 3 cubic meters, or about 10 cubic feet, of waste per year after reprocessing. (Someone should verify this, as the numbers below are based on this.) Older reactors are less efficient, which all the more reason to build more nuclear reactors and replace the old ones. I don’t have a link for that either. An acre is 43,560 square feet. If we store uranium is square containers that are 5 feet high, we could store 2,178 containers of nuclear waste per acre. Let us say 1,900 containers per acre to account for the size of the container itself. That would mean that 1 acre of land can provide enough storage for 190 modern reactors per year. By comparison, this solar project is 3,280 acres. Why takes less land?
Let us say I was wrong and modern reactors produce 20 cubic feet of waste per year after reprocessing. That means that an acre can handle 95 modern reactors a year.
Sorry, but large-scale solar power never makes sense and never will make sense. Even if solar was the ideal 100% efficient, it still would not make sense.
I would like to see terms like, “solar power farm”, “wind farm”, “solar farm”, etc. banned. These industrial power generation facilities have absolutely nothing to do with farming. The proponents of these large scale science projects like to use “farm” in their press releases and related propaganda to pretend that they are doing something beneficial, like providing food for hungry people which, obviously, they are not.
Today, in the newspaper of my hometown, the Braunschweiger Zeitung, there was an interesting article with a breakdown of the end customer prize for electricity, which amounts to about 20 Eurocent/kWh – about 28 USD-cents at the moment.
34% percent of this prize are needed by the provider to buy or produce electricity. The rest are various taxes like VAT, an eco[logical] tax, …
8% are needed to cross-subsidize the renewable energies – wind and solar. This part is expected to rise by 50%; so in 2011 about 12% of the end customer prize will be needed for the subsidy.
IOW, when we ignore the general (outrageous) taxes, we see that the low-energy collection systems wind and PV already cost a third of the entire real energy infrastructure here in Germany.
If the trend of the past few years continues, i expect 50% growth per year of this cross-subsidy.
So, the choice is, either pay an extra $0.03/kwh, now, or increase your long-term dependency on Russian natural gas? Or, go Nuclear?
They talk about a “Carbon” footprint! How about the ACTUAL footprint??
John Trigge says:
October 30, 2010 at 3:58 am
You get it! Others, like Wesley, prove the old adage that “a little knowledge can be dangerous”. Desert animals are adapted to desert conditions for a reason: they can’t survive in the shade. That’s like saying, “let’s let the burrowing owls live in trees.”
Absurd people…attributing anthropomorphic traits to animals that have been dwelling in the desert for millions of years. It has been conclusively and repeatedly shown that habitat destruction from these solar “farms” is a reality, and deprives those critters adapted to such climate of their habitat, leading them to extinction. There are plants and other creatures adapted to that habitat that will also have to seek other “pastures”, such as snakes, lizards, insects and plants.
And we laugh that Marie Antoinette (supposedly) said “let them eat cake!”.
Kum Dollison says:
October 30, 2010 at 7:47 am
Another one…
No, we drill baby drill, and also exploit hundreds of years worth of coal, gas and oil, as well as thousands of years’ worth of uranium, right here in front of you!.
Wade,
Don’t want to nit-pick, but can’t resist one correction. 3 cubic meters is a whole lot more than 10 cubic feet. Using the rough approximation of 1 meter = 1 yard, you have 3 ^3 * 3=81 cubic feet. I agree with your general point, though.
This from today’s American Thinker: [h/t Rick Moran]
“A stubborn refusal to face facts is not very smart. And you don’t need an Ivy League education to figure that out.
But in the face of a cult-like belief on all things green, reason and logic make no progress.”
The USGS just lowered their “Reserves” estimate for Alaska’s NPR (National Petroleum Reserve) from 10 Billion Barrels to “Less than 1 billion barrels.”
The price of oil has gone from the $30.00’s in 2005 to the $80.00’s in 2010, but production has Fallen.
You might want to rethink your “Hundreds of Years of Oil, Gas, and Coal.”
Just in case, you know?
Ridiculous from an engineer’s viewpoint: 4600 acres for a mere 370 MW (dependent on a sunny day).
The coal plant I worked at was rated 350 MW net (& not just during sunny days). It took about 15 acres for the plant, coal storage pile, 2 half-million gal fuel-oil tanks — everything.
A nuke-submarine’s miniaturized fission reactor could output maybe 10 MW (guessing) & fit in a large room.
What do we have? About Five Hundred Million Acres of Desert?
Sheesh.
I never realized dry, barren sand was so precious.
FredG says:
October 29, 2010 at 4:53 pm
That is doubtful. They are likely to fence off the site and a buffer zone. A few tortoises will get past the fence, where they’ll find their food source (desert plants, I’d expect) scraped away and predators (ravens) have a clear shot at them. Fire regulations require this continual weed removal for any structures or construction. As with any solar power generation, it is essential to keep mirrors and collectors clean, which means frequent use of chemical sprays (daily if the winds and dust there are similar to here). No, I can’t see the tortoises being safely returned to the site later on.
I also think that solar (and wind) power generation is best done at the endpoint: homes and businesses that use power. Instead of huge projects that can never compete with gas-burning plants for cost or efficiency, put individual or clustered generation in neighborhoods where it can help stabilize pricing and keep things going when Cal-ISO is using rotating shutdowns to curtail power use. Likewise, heat-generating industrial production processes could (and probably should) be tapped to produce some portion of local power needs.
I hope BrightSource does well, and that the animals are able to survive and adapt to the relocation. I was a big fan of the former Luz project many years ago. But this emphasis on big, centralized alternative power generation projects is a dead end.
Kum Dollison says:
The USGS just lowered their “Reserves” estimate for Alaska’s NPR (National Petroleum Reserve) from 10 Billion Barrels to “Less than 1 billion barrels.”
Yes, they have found that most of it contains natural gas rather than oil. By the way did you happen to notice how much USGS just raised their Reserves estimate for the Williston basin?
Kum Dollison says:
October 29, 2010 at 9:26 pm
No, the Luz plants in California were able to run because of (1) special taxation rules that applied at the time, and (2) rules which required utilities to buy their power at an above-market price. When the first part went away, Luz collapsed. I was a big supporter, but knew even then that solar power generation was not financial competitive. It still isn’t.
Yes, those plants couldn’t “compete” in the early nineties when SoCal utility rates were low, BUT, they’re making oodles of money, now (and, I suspect that the units going up Now will be making oodles in 2030.)
Come on, guys; we’re not border collies. Most of you will live to be more than 80 years old. Your Grandkids will still be alive in the year 2100. Twenty years won’t get your newly-born out of college.
Kum Dollison says:
October 30, 2010 at 7:47 am
“So, the choice is, either pay an extra $0.03/kwh, now, or increase your long-term dependency on Russian natural gas? Or, go Nuclear?”
You have misunderstood the cost structure. Sorry for my lack of comprehensibility.
The cross subsidy will, at the moment, be about 3 Eurocent per kWh; that’s 4.2 US cent. BUT that does NOT mean that solar power costs 3 cents more per kWh than conventional power because the output of the PV plants is only 1.2 percent of the entire generation. So one third of the prize before taxes is squandered on a miniscule, negligible generation capability that we could well do without – we wouldn’t notice the difference.
You should also know that the owners of wind and solar plants may be forced to switch off when the grid can’t take their power due to overload; but they will still be paid for what they *could* have delivered.
DaveF says:
October 30, 2010 at 4:01 am …….the Stirling engine becomes more efficient the lighter the gas used within the engine spaces, ….
Well up to a point Lord Copper. There are other considerations. Helium is an excellent gas for Stirling engines because of its very high thermal conductivity, by the standards of a gas.
Kindest Regards
@Kum Dollison:
I’d want to see why they are profitable after all these years. Are they still receiving above-market rates from SCE? Are they being tax-subsidized? Did they replace their interest-bearing notes with equity from a rich uncle who doesn’t require a high return? Did they neglect to make repairs and maintenance, so they could notch a few years of “profit” before the facilities fail? Are they using creative accounting? There are many ways to declare something profitable, especially as a subsidiary of a larger enterprise, but not all of them involve selling a large amount of product for more than it cost you to produce, sell, and distribute that product.
As I said, I wish them the best, but centralized solar and generation schemes are a dead end. They only exist through some kind of subsidy. The failure of “LUZ I” is a textbook example, and I recall reading something about LUZ II running into BrightSource’s arms because it too was facing impending bankruptcy. (I can’t find it on the Victorville Daily Press’s site, but I dimly recall it.)
Spend the money on Thorium reactors. Loads of Thorium, little waste, potentially very safe, just no good for making stuff for bombs….
For comedic value.
Jülich experimental Solar Tower Power Plant. On a bad day.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Solarthermisches_Versuchskraftwerk_J%C3%BClich_STJ.jpg
(It’s 20km from Aachen, the rainiest town in Germany)
…the looming expiration of crucial federal financial support for the multi-billion-dollar projects…
Tortoises? We don’t care about no stinking tortoises – – or anything else!
The money’s running OUT!
Now get out of my way, before I run you and your common sense over with my bulldozer!
/sarc
We’re probably not going to run short on turtles (desert, or otherwise.)
Look, I think this is what a few of you are missing. Coal won’t stay “cheap.” It increased in price, along with oil, from about $30.00/tonne for Appalachian, to $140.00/tonne in 2008, and has, now, settled back to about $60.00/tonne.
http://www.infomine.com/investment/charts.aspx?mv=1&f=f&r=15y&c=ccoal_nymex.xusd.umt,cbrent_crude_oil.xusd.ubarrel#chart
There’s, absolutely, No reason to think that coal won’t continue to rise in price along with other fossil fuels. And, there’s, absolutely, no reason to think that once a Solar Farm is paid off the Sun won’t continue to be anything but Free for the taking.
Kum Dollison says:
October 30, 2010 at 4:45 pm
“[…]with other fossil fuels. And, there’s, absolutely, no reason to think that once a Solar Farm is paid off the Sun won’t continue to be anything but Free for the taking.”
There is a thing called capital cost involved when building large scale infrastructure. In short, interest on the capital you borrow to build the thing. The lifetime of an infrastructure is not unlimited, especially without maintenance. That causes costs too. You might have to replace the inverters for PV installations after 20 years; the capacitors maybe earlier; they fall dry.
I expect PV to be cost-competitive in about 2025 when we ignore the intermittency problem – reaching prices of maybe 7 cent a kWh, that is. The price for storage systems will have to be factored in when we want to tackle the intermittency problem, and that might push back the break even another decade.
Until then, it’s subsidies.