SOLAR BIG ENOUGH TO DEFER

Solar energy firm drops plan for project in Mojave Desert; BrightSource Energy's decision ends a battle with environmentalists over a 5,130-acre site in a proposed national monument.
Louis Sahagun, September 18, 2009 (LA Times)

"Ending a bitter feud in the rush to develop solar farms, BrightSource Energy Inc….[has] scrapped a controversial plan to build a renewable energy facility in the eastern Mojave Desert wilderness that Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) wants to transform into a national monument.

"The proposal pitted companies queuing up to replace imported oil and facilitate a national clean-energy economy against environmentalists strongly opposed to the idea of creating an industrial zone within 600,000 acres of former railroad lands that had been donated to the Department of Interior for conservation."

Sleeping Beauty Valley. (click to enlarge)

"The acrimony even triggered a nasty public squabble between Robert Kennedy Jr., a senior advisor at VantagePoint Venture Partners, which raised $160 million for Oakland-based BrightSource, and David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy, which raised $40 million to buy the old railroad lands to protect them from development…

"Of particular concern was BrightSource's proposal to develop a 5,130-acre solar power plant on a portion of the donated lands known as Broadwell Dry Lake, which lies within Sleeping Beauty Valley…The scenic, near-pristine region near Ludlow is home to a significant herd of bighorn sheep and framed by the Kelso Dunes Wilderness and Bristol Mountains Wilderness on the east and the Cady Mountains Wilderness Study Area on the west…"

Artist's rendering of the solar power plant installation that, because of BrightSource Energy's commitment to do the right thing the right way, will now not happen. (click to enlarge)

"Scientists continue to catalog plants and reptiles uniquely adapted to the scorched terrain…botanists recently discovered a species of lupine that features showy purple blossoms in the spring…Biologists are also studying unusually dark lizards that appeared to have genetically adapted to the volcanic terrain…

"…[BrightSource Energy’s move ] came as a welcome surprise to environmentalists…Separately, BrightSource is pressing ahead with plans to build a massive solar energy facility in the Mojave Desert's Ivanpah Valley, near Primm, Nev., just south of Las Vegas…State and federal regulatory and land-use authorities say construction of the Ivanpah Valley project could begin as early as March."