Solar surges in the California desert. So why are environmentalists upset?

Alfredo Figueroa, an 85-year-old former miner, can rattle off the name of every major geographic feature rising from the desert floor outside of Blythe, Calif., a town of 19,000 off the Interstate 10 freeway, halfway between Los Angeles and Phoenix.

On a warm winter day, the descendant of the Chemehuevi and Yaqui tribes hiked along a mesa dotted with petroglyphs, and waved his walking stick at a chunky mountain peak 20 miles in the distance, bathed in orange by sunshine. "That's Palen," he chuckled, pointing at the formation. "See his chin sticking up?"

All of the peaks are part of creation stories, he says, from birth in the Big Maria range to death in the Mule Mountains just behind him. But it's the time-varnished desert floor that concerns him right now.

Two industrial solar farm projects — called Crimson Solar and Desert Quartzite  — are proposed for just below where he's standing. And between here and Desert Center, 20 miles west, another 10 have been built, are under construction or are seeking approvals. 

Mandated by law in 2018, California is attempting to engineer a monumental shift to zero-emission electricity by 2045. To get there, the state is adopting various measures, including a first-in-the-nation law that went into effect Jan. 1 requiring rooftop solar panels on nearly all new homes.

While California recently surpassed 1 million solar rooftops, clean energy advocates and industry officials say that won't be enough to reach the goals. They argue every possible option will be needed — including solar farms in the desert.

That's re-ignited a battle with longtime activists like Figuroa. He and area environmental groups say while they are 100% in favor of solar power, it should be installed on rooftops, landfills and other disturbed lands in urban areas — not hundreds of miles away on fragile desert landscapes.

"Along here are the ancient trails our ancestors took between all these sacred places," Figueroa says, pointing to the creosote-studded land where the 350-megawatt Crimson Solar project is proposed. "This is a pristine area that hasn't been destroyed, and they will destroy it."

Solar power for 400,000 homes?

But when others look out at the Southern California desert, they see a different story.

"There are two places in the world that have this high level of solar radiance: One is the California desert and the other is northern Africa," says Shannon Eddy, founding executive director of the Large-Scale Solar Association, based in Sacramento. "What's unique about the California desert is that ... it's so close to load centers (cities that need power). There's nothing like it in the world."

With carbon emissions from coal and natural gas-powered plants stoking climate change worldwide, Eddy and others say industrial-strength renewables are critical. "It's time to dispel the myth that rooftop solar alone is enough," says Eddy, who represents solar developers in California, Nevada and Arizona. "I love rooftop, but we need to be doing that, we need to do large-scale utility, and we need to be looking under mattresses for energy efficiency measures. We need it all!"  

All told, nearly 30,000 acres of photovoltaic solar farms producing up to 4,000 megawatts could come online in the California desert within the next few years, a 30% uptick statewide over 2018, the latest year for which data is available. That's enough to power as many as 400,000 homes for a year.

Current solar projects:

• Desert Quartzite (First Solar), about 3,800 acres, 450 megawatts, near final approval
• Crimson Solar (Recurrent), about 2,500 acres; 350 megawatts, public comment period open until Jan. 30
• Palen (EDF Renewables) approx. 3,140 acres; 500 megawatts, under construction
• Blythe (NextEra), approx. 4,318 acres; 485 megawatts (235 operational, 250 pending construction) 
• McCoy/Arlington (NextEra) approx. 4,282 acres; 750 megawatts (250  operational, 500 pending construction)
• Desert Sunlight (NextEra) approx. 4,084 Acres; 550 megawatts cconstructed and operational
• Genesis (NextEra)  approx. 1,950 acres; 250 megawatts constructed and operational
• Desert Harvest (EDF Renewables) approx. 1,412 acres; 150 megawatts under construction
• Arica (Clearway Energy Group) approx. 2,000 acres; 265 megawatts, application being processed 
• Victory Pass (Clearway Energy Group) approx. 1,800 acres; 200 megawatts, application being processed
• IP Athos (Intersect Power) private land facility, 3,600 acres, 500 megawatts tie-in on public lands, being constructed 
• Two companies have applied for a 12th project on the same acreage; both are being reviewed by BLM.

Kevin Emmerich, co-founder of the environmental group  Basin and Range Watch, based in Beatty, Nev., has methodically opposed every large solar project in the desert. He says the increase "is just a gigantic assault of these industrial projects on desert habitats and cultural sites."

"We have the ability to get off of fossil fuels in a responsive, ecologically friendly way," he says. "We're not doing that. We're creating new environmental problems by trying to create solutions to old environmental problems."

But Eddy says the new projects are far more environmentally friendly than earlier ones. She says the project boom may seem large, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to state modeling showing an estimated 90,000 to 125,000 megawatts of large-scale solar power needs to be added to the grid in the next 25 years. 

"We have to figure out where we want to build these plants, and we can't fight each other anymore," she says. "The further we stall, the worse shape we're in" in terms of greenhouse gases.

Rooftops versus long-distance

The wrangling offers a snapshot of the current state of solar energy in California: It's surging, but not quite as planned. Thanks to homeowner rebates, a sharp drop in prices of photovoltaic panels, and consumer jitters over blackouts due to wildfires, rooftop solar installations have climbed to 9 gigawatts of power, closing in on the 12 gigawatts of industrial solar power.

Large-scale solar farms are growing too, but, some say, not at the pace originally envisioned in the 2016 Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP).

That plan was signed by federal, state, county, tribal, environmental and industry groups in the last months of the Obama administration. It was supposed to fast-track California's industrial solar, wind and geothermal projects across 388,000 acres (about 600 square miles). At the same time, it outlined a process to preserve six million acres of federal land.  

But U.S. Bureau of Land Management officials have denied 93 proposals, often due to environmental concerns. Trump administration officials have ordered BLM to re-open the plan to all energy development, including oil and gas drilling and mining. 

The initial slow ramp-up of big solar plants was fine with desert environmental and tribal groups. 

"I don't think the average person driving by appreciates how ecologically valuable these desert wash habitats are," says Chris Clarke, associate director of the California desert program for the National Parks Conservation Association. He says large-scale power generation tied to a massive grid is "a 20th-century business plan for a 21st-century problem."

But others say all options need to be considered as officials push to potentially electrify the entire state with enough clean energy to power nearly 36 million cars and trucks and 17 million buildings.

"2020 is going to be a pivotal year; I would say it's going to set the pace for the next decade of renewables," says Bernadette Del Chiaro, executive director of the California Solar and Storage Association, a Sacramento-based group that represents manufacturers of rooftop solar and other small "distributed" systems. "We really don't have a clear road map for how to meet the zero-carbon mandate."

Del Chiaro says current state modeling wrongly assumes rooftop solar will plateau or even decline, and questions the megawattage that Eddy says must come from industrial solar farms.

Nevertheless, she says, California can't wait a decade to see if enough rooftop solar can be built. Approvals and construction of utility-scale projects in carefully selected landscapes also need to start now. "Climate change is doing far worse damage to species than habitat loss," she says.   

Feds want 'to have the DRECP blown up'

While both environmentalists and industry representatives say the aims of the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan were noble, neither is totally happy with how things have played out.

In sun-drenched eastern Riverside and San Bernardino counties, many residents and conservationists say the seeming "no man's land" areas were wrongly made a "development focus areas," or as they see it, sacrifice zones.

Solar industry representatives, meanwhile, are not pleased with the fees they have to pay to lease public lands for their projects. The costs have skyrocketed 600% in recent years, said Eddy, via a series of increases. A BLM spokeswoman said they now collect $6 million in rent annually from eastern Riverside County projects.

Responding to rural constituents' anger, San Bernardino County has banned the construction of large solar and wind farms across more than one million acres. Riverside County continues to process projects on private lands. 

One reason more projects have not been approved since the DRECP was adopted is that more endangered or threatened species have been found in areas slated for renewable development than expected. At the same time, species that the plan aimed to protect have not always been found in designated conservation areas. 

"They thought the desert tortoise were going to be in one place, and instead, there were lots of them in an area identified for solar development, and none in the places where they're supposed to be," says Eddy of the Large-Scale Solar Association

Jeremiah Karuzas, BLM's renewable energy program manager for California, says his agency is drafting an amendment to the DRECP. "We realized some things we needed to fix or adjust to give additional flexibility, both for project developers and BLM itself."

Asked about the Interior Department order to allow all kinds of energy projects — including oil drilling and mining — in the DRECP, Karuzas acknowledged the proposed adjustments "wouldn't apply just to renewable energy, but to any BLM activity in that area."

That prospect sets off alarm bells for solar developers and environmentalists alike,  despite their issues with the current plan. 

"The BLM guys know the ways the regs got written has led to barriers that were unintended," says V. John White with the Center for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Technologies, a Sacramento partnership of major environmental groups and clean energy companies.  "And changes that could be agreed to by environmentalists,(and) solar and wind industry developers, can't get accomplished because the federal government wants to have the DRECP blown up to do more mining."

Eddy, the solar industry advocate, agrees the plan needs to be fixed, but says fossil fuels should not be added. "Oil and gas was never envisioned as part of the desert conservation plan," she says.

Clarke with the National Parks Conservation Association says: "People have a diversity of opinions about the DRECP, but the conservation community is unanimous that it needs to be defended in its current form."

There is good news, say some

Alex Daue, the assistant director of energy and climate for The Wilderness Society, a national organization, says the solar farm activity along the 10 freeway near existing transmission lines shows that the plan is beginning to work.  

Daue sees it as a model for bipartisan legislation proposed in both houses of Congress to designate areas across the West for utility-scale renewables.  

The Public Land Renewable Energy Development Act would identify lower-value areas for commercial-scale renewable development. But instead of sending all land leasing revenues to the general treasury, as is currently done, millions would go to local communities, states and federal conservation and innovation efforts. 

As big cities and suburbs cut the cord with coal-fired power plants in Utah and elsewhere, they're looking to sign contracts with wind and solar power from rural California. That includes the fully approved Palen project, a 3,100-acre development named for a dry lake below the mountains of the same name, near Joshua Tree National Park.

EDF Renewables North America, the developer, announced last month that it has sold nearly all of the 500 megawatts the facility will create. Its customers include Southern California Edison, a subsidiary of Shell Oil, and CleanPowerSF, which serves 300,000 San Francisco customers.

Plants, animals and desert soil

Conservationists say the long-distance sales prove the desert is being used as a sacrifice zone. They and developers offer dueling research on the impact of the projects, which average five square miles in size.

Clarke with the National Parks Association and Emmerich of Basin and Range Watch say the solar farms are harming myriad plants and animals, like the desert tortoise, Mojave fringe-toed lizard, ironwood tree stands and a suite of desert flowers.

They point to wildlife mortality counts showing scores of species of birds, along with bats and monarch butterflies, have been injured or killed at solar projects. Thousands of birds have been incinerated or singed mid-air at the Ivanpah desert facility due to its concentrating thermal technology, which creates extreme heat via a series of mirrors. 

Pilots also have complained about blinding glare produced by its thermal towers, which create a piercing light. BLM and other agencies are conducting "glint and glare" and wildlife studies. The thermal technology is not being used in new projects because the price of photovoltaic solar panels has plummeted, notes Eddy.

But photovoltaic solar can create a phenomenon called the "lake effect," says Clarke, sending birds winging their way into hot panels, mistakenly thinking they are a cool oasis. 

Peter Weiner, head of the environment and energy practice at the law firm Paul Hastings in Los Angeles, says there's no research definitively documenting such a problem.  "We don’t think there is evidence of a lake effect," says Weiner, who works with solar developers. He said while an early mortality count at the Desert Sunlight facility found dead water birds, there is also a working fish farm nearby that might attract them. Tracking at other PV solar facilities shows "insignificant" impacts on birds, he adds.

Another concern raised by Clarke is that solar installations disturb a type of desert soil called caliche. A 2014 UC Riverside study for the California Energy Commission concluded losses of caliche and organic matter in surface soil layers "compromise the value of solar energy as an alternative to fossil carbon burning by releasing stored inorganic carbon into the atmosphere and destroying the ability of the deserts to sequester carbon."

The researchers recommended locating solar developments on previously disturbed lands. 

Weiner said he is not aware of further studies on caliche, but that solar farm sites are no longer mass graded, with post holes being dug in carefully selected spots. Eddy offered two other studies, funded by solar companies, showing that with proper siting, endangered kit foxes fared better than in raw wilderness at San Luis Obispo County PV farms, possibly even using the panels for protection from predators.

Public comment period closing soon

As technology has evolved, developers are proposing smaller solar projects than in the boom days of major federal incentives more than a decade ago. BLM staff now also often ask developers to surgically excise ravines and other watershed areas, to preserve woodlands and other key habitat.

That's the case with the Crimson Solar project, they note, where Recurrent Energy is seeking a right of way on 2,500 acres of public land to construct a 350-megawatt photovoltaic facility. That's down from nearly 7,000 acres first proposed years ago by another developer. 

Scott Dawson, director of permitting for Recurrent Energy, said at a recent public hearing that the project would not destroy any petroglyphs or sacred sites, and was being proposed in an environmentally sensitive fashion. Public comment is open until Jan. 30.

Both Figueroa's cultural resources group, La Cuna de Aztlan, and Basin and Range Watch say while the project is smaller, neither Recurrent nor BLM are presenting the full picture. For instance, says Emmerich, a popular biking and jeep trail would be heavily impacted by chain link fencing, as would vistas from documented historic sites.

 The adjoining 450 megawatt project, Desert Quartzite, by First Solar, could receive final approvals soon. It would connect with Southern California Edison’s Colorado Substation, on about 3,700 acres of federal land and 154 acres of private land.

As a former Sierra Club staffer, Eddy says tough choices need to be made about where to locate large solar projects.

"California has set some good and aggressive climate targets, and getting there is going to require breaking ground that hasn't been broken before," she says. "It requires very important conversations about land use, conversations that are deep and profound and difficult. ... The whole world is facing these decisions on a macro-level."

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Alex Daue's last name and gave an incorrect title for him. He is assistant director of energy and climate at The Wilderness Society.  

Janet Wilson is senior environment reporter for The Desert Sun and writes USA Today's Climate Point newsletter @janetwilson66 janet.wilson@desertsun.com