Solar Plants

Desert tortoises:

The Mojave Desert is an attractive place to put solar simply because the sun shines brightly for much of the year there. But figuring out where to put the projects is shaping up to be a fight, given that 80 percent of the land is federally owned, either by the military, the BLM or the National Park Service. Then there's the problem of where to put the transmission lines to move the power to populated areas.

The first of the projects likely to be built is the Ivanpah Solar Power Complex, a 4,000-acre site in the Mojave Desert. It's currently in the permitting process; a decision is expected in November 2009. Its solar thermal technology is similar to a camper using a magnifying glass to start a fire. Picture three towers, each surrounded by tens of thousands of mirrors, known as heliostats. The mirrors reflect the sun's rays onto giant tower boilers filled with water. Heat would generate steam at temperatures approaching 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That steam would be used to make electricity.

That's bad news for the desert tortoises and other critters living there, according to Ilene Anderson, a biologist for the Center for Biological Diversity. "At the Ivanpah site, they're dealing with super-heated liquids, and they don't want to have any inadvertent fires from vegetation." For the desert tortoises, that means no afternoon lounging in the shade of creosote bushes.

But the amount of solar power produced could be impressive. BrightSource Energy, the company building the Ivanpah project, says it could power 142,000 homes and reduce CO2 emissions by more than 280,000 tons per year. According to the company, the 400 megawatt installation could produce more energy in one year more than all the rooftop solar units currently installed in the U.S.

BrightSource has some powerful friends to help bring the heat. Among its investors is the venture capital firm Vantage Point Venture Partners, which counts among its advisors Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the cousin of Gov. Schwarzenegger's wife, Maria Shriver; and Terry Tamminen, the former state environmental protection secretary, who continues to advise Schwarzenegger on energy policy. Ironically, environmentalist Kennedy famously tangled with his eco brethren by opposing the installation of a large-scale wind project off the cost of Cape Cod, the Cape Wind Project.

Advocates for desert wildlife realize they may not be able to stand in the way of the political juggernaut. In that case, they argue, the solar plants should be built on lands that have already been disturbed by agriculture and human development. In fact, says BrightSource's Wachs, the Ivanpah site has been used in the past for cattle grazing and off-road vehicles. It also has a major transmission line running through it, unlike many other remote desert sites, to move the power to people who need it.

A permit for the Ivanpah project will likely require a "mitigation" effort. BrightSource would buy a yet-to-be-determined amount of similar habitat and move the tortoises there. But tortoises don't take kindly to being relocated. In March 2008, about 670 tortoises were moved by helicopter to make way for new combat training grounds at the Fort Irwin Military Reservation in the Mojave Desert. But the relocation was suspended after 90 tortoises perished.

Part of the problem is that the tortoises wouldn't stay put in their new digs. "Tortoises are not migratory. They have home ranges that they live in all of their lives," explains biologist Anderson. But if you take them away from their home range they try to walk -- a few miles per day -- back home. "You can move them and they instinctively know which direction their home is and they make a break for it." The slow walk home makes them easier prey to coyotes and cars.

Terry Frewin, chair of the Sierra Club's California/Nevada Desert Committee, says that if the desert tortoise were a cuddlier poster child, preserving the desert might stand a better chance of winning public sympathy. "I often equate our deserts with the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in terms of the energy fight, and the uniqueness of the habitat of each," says Frewin. "There are probably more threatened and endangered species in the desert than in ANWR. I often feel that if we had a polar bear cub in the desert, we'd get more attention."

To Moody, from Desert Survivors, there's great irony in attempting to fight climate change by building industrial power plants in the desert. Global warming is already thawing the tundra, he says. "So now we should sacrifice the desert so we don't thaw the tundra?"