“Front-paged” from a comment on the previous post, a disappointingly content-free piece of flackery from the Solar Energy Industries Association.

This comment is in reference to your post, “Desert Solar is Not Renewable Energy”:

Which is why I thought I’d move it from where they put it, on a post about my cat. (Social Networking Lesson 1: off-topic posting makes you look inept.) Not that it would have looked much better posted as a reply to the “Desert Solar is Not Renewable Energy” post, because it doesn’t really address any of the points raised in that post, some of which rebut points made here. Though you can be the judge of that.

Solar energy is the cleanest, safest and most abundant energy resource available. As an industry we are committed to solving our country’’s most pressing energy problems. As the environmental catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico illustrates, the U.S. needs to quickly move away from the dirty fossil fuels of the past and toward clean, renewable energy sources like solar. In fact, 92 percent of Americans support greater use of solar, now.

All of the above is more or less true, aside from the second sentence. People in the US do support greater use of solar. They don’t necessarily support public lands concentrating solar as opposed to rooftop PV, especially once they learn about the costs of concentrating solar. The trade group uses the Mom And Apple Pie aspect of rooftop solar panels as cover for their land grab.

And about that second sentence.  As an industry, the developers of large industrial solar are committed not to “solving the country’s most pressing energy problems,” but to capitalizing effectively on a developing business opportunity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that: developers of rooftop solar are doing the same thing, and I applaud them. But if the SEIA was truly “committed to solving our country’’s most pressing energy problems,” it would be working on conservation — another burgeoning business opportunity! — not on scraping irreplaceable old-growth desert for short-lived concentrating solar factories. Conservation could cut US energy use by 30 percent in the next year or two, using existing technology and with minimal environmental impact. There’s no way concentrating solar could make that kind of difference in that short a term, even if we removed any kind of environmental, worker safety, and zoning safeguards.

The way we currently generate power in the U.S. not only pollutes our air, rivers, lakes, and coasts, it uses massive amounts of water at coal and nuclear power plants. While water is a necessary ingredient for many concentrating solar power (CSP) technologies, the industry has developed dry-cooling technology that uses 80-90 percent less water and is continuing to develop technologies that use even less water.

Here’s an interesting fact about concentrating solar’s water use. Last month the staff in the office of US Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) put out a report on just that topic [PDF], and based on figures they gathered from the US Department of Energy, they put together a comparison of the water use intensity of different methods of electric power generation: in other words, how many gallons of water per megawatt Kyl, like many Arizona Republicans, has an axe to grind, or at least an axe handle. It may be there’s a flaw in the figures somewhere. Still, they’re interesting:

As you can see, this table shows that concentrating solar uses far more water per megawatt-hour of electricity generated than do most other industrial sources of energy. (Interestingly, the biggest water user, geothermal, is also touted as a “renewable” source of energy.)

The chart doesn’t list the water intensity of dry-cooled plants, which are indeed far more water-efficient. DoE figures put that efficiency at about a 95 percent reduction in water use over wet-cooled concentrating solar. The thing is, dry cooling is less efficient when it’s hot out. Just when the sun’s blazing down in the southwest and people are cranking up their AC, the output of dry-cooled concentrating solar plants takes a hit.

Meanwhile, rooftop PV keeps chugging along just fine as it gets hotter.

Fossil fuels also require a massive amount of land. Currently, oil and gas companies have leased an area equivalent in size to Washington State to drill for fuel. While Americans who live near these drilling sites worry about oil and gas spills near their coast lines and communities, no one is worrying about a sun spill.

Very droll! Also a non sequitur, and a third-grade excuse. And, technically, wrong in a minor way. Yes, fossil fuel extraction destroys an immense amount of the earth’s surface. Mountaintop removal mining, oil spills, poisoning of aquifers by fracking for natural gas, sludge floods beneath mines, yada yada. It’s really, really bad. So why is the answer to destroy even more untouched land? This isn’t a question of “fairness” to industrial public lands solar developers. Fossil fuels’ impact on the landscape is egregious, and industrial solar in the desert makes the situation worse. If it was a question of repairing damage done by the fossil fuel industry — if the big solar plants were going onto old stripmines and oil refineries and land permanently ruined by oil spills, then maybe they’d have a point.

But as it stands, coal involves mountaintop removal mining and solar involves desert removal, and proposing one as an alternative to another is just nuts.

Also? There are solar spills. Here’s an example, in a photo provided by Basin and Range Watch:

It’s called “flash glare,” and it’s a known issue with solar trough installations. Sure, it’s not as devastating as a coal slurry flood or a crude oil spill, but it’s a real problem for highway safety and potentially for air safety, as well as having significant visual impact on surrounding wildlands and unknown effects on wildlife. Saying “no one’s worried about a sun spill” just isn’t true. It may not be the biggest concern over siting of these facilities, but it’s there.

Onward:

Solar energy helps the environment by supplying clean, renewable energy and the industry is committed to ensuring that utility-scale projects have a minimal impact as well. CSP projects proposed for public lands must complete a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) as required by the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) before being issued a construction permit by the U.S. Department of the Interior. This review process involves coordinated analyses by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and other state and local agencies to identify the potential impacts of a proposed project, including on water resources.

And those agencies are contending with so many applications for new projects, many of them with very tight deadlines due to potential Stimulus funding, that they are completely overwhelmed. Applicants are submitting ludicrously incomplete EISes, conducting biological surveys from vehicles, omitting mention of major biological and geological features. Tessera flat out lied by omission, for instance, in its documents for its proposed Solar Two plant near Ocotillo, California, declining to mention the presence on the site of large flood-carved watercourses, ancient creosote and smoketree forest, flat-tailed horned lizard habitat and other delicate and irreplaceable features of the Colorado Desert. BrightSource’s contractors failed to assess the visual impact of the proposed Ivanpah solar site on the protected Stateline Wilderness because they decided it was too hot to hike to the wilderness boundary. Etc.

As federal and other agency staff struggle to contend with the volume of applications, effective oversight and analysis of each proposal increasingly depends on activists, members of the public who devote time and effort to doing the work the agencies should be able to do themselves. And this isn’t enough for the energy developers, who routinely support “streamlining” the permitting process.

And this becomes an even bigger issue when projects start going in. BrightSource, for instance, is having some serious problems installing test poles at Ivanpah. Pile-driving into an alluvial fan is hard work: there are seemingly random boulders strewn all through the top few hundred feet of soil. After all, it’s basically the scree and rubble created as a mountain falls apart. So what’s their plan? To vibrate the poles into place, which will theoretically nudge the boulders out of the way.

The kangaroo rats living in the Mojave desert have extremely sensitive hearing. The noise from a passing Off-Road Vehicle can deafen a k-rat for days. Same goes for desert tortoises. Kangaroo rats depend on their hearing to evade predators. Imagine giant machines vibrating hundreds of giant metal poles into a mass of rock. Imagine the undocumented effects of that process on sensitive wildlife — none of it mentioned or formally reviewed in the permitting process.

If you want to know what the the Solar Energy Industries Association really thinks about environmental protection, check out these remarks contained in the group’s formal testimony on the California Desert Protection Act of 2010:

The proposed legislation would prohibit BLM processing of any right‐of‐way application that could affect native groundwater supplies, both within and adjacent to the proposed Mojave National Preserve. The National Environmental Policy Act and other laws already require the consideration of the environmental impacts of water use by any proposed project, and SEIA believes these existing provisions to be sufficient. The additional requirement proposed in S. 2921 could serve to restrict solar development, even on lands outside protected areas.

Another provision in this proposed legislation would allow BLM to deny a right‐of‐way application for any project which is on “wilderness quality land” or which may impact “sensitive species listed by the BLM.” SEIA is concerned that these provisions are overly broad and could unduly limit solar energy development in the Southwest.

Kinda gives the lie to the pious expressions of concern for the environment.

Back to the blog comment:

Many solar developers are also strategically locating projects on previously-disturbed land to minimize impacts. For example, Abengoa Solar’s proposed 280 megawatt parabolic trough project in Gila Bend, Ariz., is to be constructed on land previously used for alfalfa farming. Once operational, the project will farm the sun, generating clean, renewable electricity while using only one-fourth of the water required for alfalfa irrigation.

That’s potentially a promising development. Depending on the specific site, I might well support the project. I strongly prefer distributed generation: the era of giant power-generating utilities is over, and distributed generation is really the only sane way to go in the long-term. Still, retiring desert alfalfa farms is way better than converting old-growth desert wildlands. Abengoa has another project planned at Harper Lake that sounds similar, to be placed on former alfalfa fields using allocated groundwater, and if it weren’t for the project’s encroachment on the Harper Lake Area of Critical Environmental Concern I might just quietly fail to oppose it. Developing private lands isn’t a panacea. Many private lands possess significant ecological value for wildlife, watershed values, and cultural value for long-time residents. The Marin Agricultural Land Trust oversees a lot of undeveloped ag land that’s privately owned, for instance, and converting it to industrial energy development would be atrocious.

But Abengoa’s at least heading in the right direction: replacing a destructive land use with another that uses fewer resources.

It’s clear that America needs to move toward a renewable energy future and solar energy is one of the quickest ways to reduce our dangerous dependence on fossil fuels.

Monique Hanis, Spokesperson
Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA)

See, here’s the thing that frustrates me so much about SEIA’s content-free comment: as is potentially the case with projects such as Abengoa’s, the group supports a lot of good things. It represents installers of rooftop PV as well as giant energy companies seeking to pave the desert. It pushes for net metering and feed-in tariffs, for sensible amendments to Renewable Portfolio Standards, for repeal and amendment of restrictive covenants and HOA rules that slow installation of rooftop PV and solar water heaters. It does a lot of good work. Representing both sides of the industry as it does, the SEIA could have offered a nuanced, informed response to my post that furthered discussion and offered the chance for informed disagreement on certain issues, and consensus on others.

Instead we got PR flackery. It’s an opportunity missed.

1. 
   Rachel Shaw 2010 06 30 at 9:59:30 am

   I hadn’t heard of flash glare before this, and I’m stunned by it.  The picture alone is hard to look at - I can’t imagine how unpleasant the real thing is!

2. 
   Bill Mcdonald 2010 06 30 at 10:01:57 am

   Chris,

   Yes they sure missed an opportunity all right.

   They could have responded with a nuanced thoughtful response but instead they sent the same proforma canned pitch that goes out to everyone from congressman to dog catcher.

   Also, this Tessera company seems incapable of telling the truth, they said there were no
   washes present at the Calico Solar site as well, and as I pointed out in my trip report
   there, a huge wash ran right into the eastern boundary.

   Thanks for this great article.

3. 
   Larry Hogue 2010 06 30 at 1:50:05 pm

   Outstanding!Sad thing is, PR flackery seems to work. Just keep repeating the same wrong or incomplete message no matter what the question is. Good job taking it apart.