Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Some green groups finally seem to be expressing concern that colossal renewable infrastructure projects on federal land, clearing, poisoning and paving over millions of acres of federally protected wilderness, for solar farms and wind projects, might harm the natural environment.
Government’s Push for Solar Power on Federal Lands Stirs Concerns
Environmentalists, renewable-energy firms raise doubts over plan to streamline permitting process.
SAGUACHE, Colo.—Over Key lime pie at The Oasis, one of this tiny town’s two restaurants, officials from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and local leaders grappled recently with a big problem: the failure to attract solar energy companies to the San Luis Valley, whose elevation of over 7,000 feet should make for prime solar potential.
For now, the only solar-power production in the valley, a scenic expanse a few hours south of Denver, is on private land—despite years of effort by local BLM officials to develop solar on federal lands here, including an auction in 2013 that attracted zero bids from renewable-energy companies.
“At the risk of ruffling the feathers around this table,” said Jason Anderson, Saguache County commissioner, “I’d pick a solar project on private lands over public lands. It’s going to be a lot quicker.”
…
Clean-power advocates say the millions of acres of federal lands, with their wide expanses and low population, are a natural home for wind and solar projects. After nearly eight years of regulations curtailing pollution from fossil fuels, the new rule will be the administration’s first major stab at regulating renewable-energy development on public lands.
Yet many traditional allies are dividing over the rule. Environmentalists welcome renewable energy, but worry about how wind and solar projects on federal lands affect wildlife and other natural resources. Renewable-energy companies anticipate new opportunities, but say the rule could lead to higher costs. The administration is seeking to strike a balance between the two, while pursuing its goal of fighting climate change by doubling down on renewable energy.
…
BLM, which manages 250 million acres of federal lands mostly in Western states, has employed a patchwork of interim policies since 2009 to approve and manage these projects. Officials hope the new rule will speed and simplify the process.
…
This effort to accelerate the wanton destruction of millions of acres of wilderness – is mild concern really all that green groups can manage?
I mean I have no problem with sacrificing a few acres for a new mine, for producing the raw materials which make our modern civilisation possible, but I’m horrified at the thought of bulldozing, paving, poisoning, uprooting millions of acres of land for no useful purpose whatsoever.
If this plan goes ahead, thousands, millions of acres of renewable installations will be built, only to be abandoned as soon as the subsidy money dries up. But the scars on the once pristine wilderness will last for centuries.
One day green groups will realise to their shame what they have done, by facilitating this senseless industrial madness, this destruction without purpose. Let us hope that an awakening comes soon enough, to save some of the untouched wilderness which green groups once committed themselves to protecting.
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A few years ago at a Trader Joe’s I met a young lady who was collecting donations for a well known”wildlife” group. She said she was helping to save the wild lands. I asked her if she enjoyed hiking to beautiful places. Yes, she said. When I mentioned motorcycles she sneered.
So I asked her what she would do, when in 50 years, she could not longer hike 10 miles to a beautiful waterfall she had enjoyed in her youth. A look of alarm came over her face, as she realized that her fund raising was effectively dooming her to being shut out of the thing she was trying to save.
I suggested gently that maybe there is a reason for motorized vehicles in the forest. Otherwise we discriminate against all those who are “differently abled” than the young and mobile.
Here’s a view of a new solar farm opening in Minnesota: http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/news/2016/10/18/minnesotas-largest-solar-farm-about-to-open-heres.html
A 1000 acres of prime, denuded farm land. It’ll open in December and produce 100MW, powering 20000 homes! Except at night, on cloudy days, and anytime during a Minnesota winter when that’s pretty unlikely.
It seems in fact to be rather poor land and will now be of benefit to wildlife – besides providing its owners with an income they couldn’t get from farming. (UK solar farms are usually grazed -no word on if this one will be)
https://www.mprnews.org/story/2016/10/19/north-star-solar-project-opens
“Clifford Holcomb says putting solar panels on land that used to be not very good corn and soybean fields makes a lot more sense.
“There’s no money in farming,” he said, “not around here, anyway.””
and
“While the solar installation is replacing corn and soybean fields, there’s still room for native prairie plants under and around the panels that will serve as habitat for bees and other pollinators.
For the Holcombs and some of the other landowners, the North Star project is allowing them to move on from farming at a time in their lives when most other people their age are retired.”
Yeah, that farm land is only projected to be yielding about 160 bushels/acre of corn and 43 bushels/acre of soybeans. Good yields for both crops. http://www.extension.umn.edu/agriculture/business/land-economics/minnesota-central-budget/index.html
Wouldn’t bet on a lot of growth being allowed around the panels. Anything above the panel will decrease the electrical output during the only months that count. Panels likely to be covered by snow in most other months.
Britain gets, on average, about 1493 hours of sunshine per year:
https://www.currentresults.com/Weather/United-Kingdom/annual-sunshine.php.
……out of 4,507 hours of daylight in a typical year (do the math):
http://www.projectbritain.com/weather/sunshine.htm.
So they get sunshine 33% of the time during daylight hours (1493/4507).
With a 24 hours in a day, 365 days in a year, they get sunshine only 17% of the time ((365 times 24) / 1493).
Plus, with its northern latiitude, the sun is weak and low in the sky during the colder months of the year.
All considered, solar energy is arguably a joke in the U.K. Same argument goes for us in the snowbelt states in the northern tier of the U.S. Not like the amount of sunshine they get in desert climates, is it?
Guess this is why they are going to build a nuke plant in the U.K.
Oops. Should have crunched the number for Minnesota, not the U.K.
The numbers for Minnesota look somewhat better than those of the U.K., but they still don’t compare with the amount of sunshine in desert climates:
http://www.usclimatedata.com/climate/minneapolis/minnesota/united-states/usmn0503.
Minnesota gets about 2607 hours of sunshine per year according to the link above which is about 30% of the time in a 24-a-day, 365-day year. But then there is capacity factor to be considered, along with Minnesota being in a northern latitude where the sun will be weak and low in the sky during the cold weather months like in Britain.
It will also be quite a job keeping the snow off of all those panels during winter. And solar panels don’t last as long as a new gas-fired power plant would. All in all, not exactly what I would consider a good investment. Not at all.
Political decisions are being made and not scientific decisions when it comes to renewables.
When the environmentalists jumped onto the “bad, bad CO2” bandwagon, they had no idea what the consequences were going to be – destroying the environment to accommodate for renewable energy. As it stands now, those wind turbines are probably bringing many bird species to the brink of extinction faster than any other man made variable in existence.
FJ Shepherd,
Wasn’t there a famous quote one time that said something to the effect that…
If you look at the figures quoted for Golden Eagle deaths in the US you will find the entire population has been made extinct every few years for a couple of decades…
go on, compare supposed eagle wind farm death stats against population surveys and see where it gets you…
Baby steps. A proper characterization of so-called “green”, “clean”, “renewable” energy is long overdue.
Spetzer86: Maybe it Is time for a new acronym: ASSHI = Agricultural Subsidized Solar Heat Island
Large wind farms cause climate change. For real, seriously.
So do solar panels, which are specifically constructed to absorb as much sunlight as possible. UHI on steroids.
No one is talking about putting renewable energy projects in wilderness areas.
Irresponsible journalism, if it could even be defined as journalism. As if the WWII picture of bulldozers isn’t laughable enough, the notion that renewable energy projects “destroy ” land, and are worthless without subsidies is ridiculous, and inherently dishonest. This is exactly the kind of agenda driven rhetoric that this site normally rails against. A pathetically dishonest misuse of a platform. This type of garbage is what loses viewership.
What’s the matter, qbagwell? Did you become bored with John Kook’s skepticalsciencedotcom website?
qbagwell, you offer no evidence only baseless accusations. Wind power does destroy the view. And kills birds, including endangered species. And disturbs ground dwelling animals. And requires fossil fuel backup. And would not be built without large operating subsidies. Solar panels farms do not permit farming, do displace native flora and fauna, and are completely dependent on subsidies. Both wind and solar destabilize the grid, are unreliable, and produce expensive power.
qbagwell,
If you’re so concerned that:
“This type of garbage is what loses viewership,” then I humbly suggest that you get lost!
The environmental lobbies and their industry patrons are getting beaten soundly by the double-edged propaganda they used to defeat their political and economic competitors.
#TweetyTheBird #BambiTheDeer #JiminyTheCricket #AudreyThePlant #MaoTheChineseSerf #GreenTheNewGray #RenewableDriversNotTech
#Catastrophic Anthropogenic Government Whoring
Another “solution” inspired by the Pro-Choice fantasy.
Green groups object? Green groups can be bought. The RSPB here in the UK rarely if ever oppose any wind turbines despite research into bird deaths by themselves and the wind industry.
“We are involved in scrutinising hundreds of wind farm applications every year to determine their likely wildlife impacts, and we ultimately object to about 6% of those we engage with, because they threaten bird populations. Where developers are willing to adapt plans to reduce impacts to acceptable levels we withdraw our objections, in other cases we robustly oppose them.”
https://www.rspb.org.uk/our-work/our-policies-and-campaigns/policies/windfarms/
So apparently, 94% of wind turbines in the UK are totally bird friendly. If I go outside and hit a pigeon with a tennis racket because the guano is making the paint on my shed rot (an example, I have no shed!), I get fined and could potentially receive a custodial sentence for animal cruelty. Yet there is no issue for the RSPB in regards to wind turbines, because it is for ‘The Greater Good’.
An industry which as I write this, is producing a whopping 0.25 GW of the 26.5GW demand in the UK on a Sunday night. Ahem…
The RSPB frequently oppose wind turbines and have had more schemes stopped than any other organisation I know… for example the extension of the offshore London Array.
That those are only 6% of all wind applications shows the RSPB can distinguish between harmful and harmless schemes.
Stats on bird deaths from the US misrepresent data from a handful of badly sited old wind farms, which are not like those in the UK.
Birds are not harmed by UK wind farms.
http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/13411472.RSPB_warns_of_windfarm_threat_to_birds_of_prey/
https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/scotland/385858/undefined-headline-390/
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-36048939
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/environment/wildlife/article3802410.ece
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-23082846
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/scotland/11196172/Wind-turbines-have-killed-more-birds-of-prey-than-persecution-this-year.html
http://windbyte.co.uk/birds.html
…and so on…
Easy to find contradiction of your claim. Just use your favorite search engine.
You need to look at that stuff before you cut and paste it… and not post same report from different sources twice.
You’ll find we are talking not even tens of birds reported killed by turbines in Scotland, over several years, and that more birds of prey are still shot or poisoned. More White Tailed Eagles have been killed by trains than turbines…
The golden Plovers were disturbed by construction, not killed. The Needletail was a single tired migrant.
you’ve trawled all the headlines and proved my point: a tiny number of birds killed.
and you missed this:
https://cleantechnica.com/2016/09/28/decades-long-research-project-shows-golden-eagles-thriving-scottish-wind-farms/
“Decades-Long Research Project Shows Golden Eagles Thriving At Scottish Wind Farms”
I see that the friends of Mr Bundy have won their Court case. Maybe this will start something…. And people who criticise folk who live in the rough country, should try it or just watch quietly.
This news item should get an award for the dumbest coverage and lack of perspective. Federal lands have been talked about for at least 10 years now in regards to utility scale PV. The policy reviews and studies have amounted to blue smoke and mirrors with next to nothing actually coming from the talk.
The difference between a developer and an environmentalist is that the environmentalist has already built his cabin in the woods.