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Business/Finance See other Business/Finance Articles Title: The U.S. Just Approved One of the World’s Biggest Solar Power Plants Yahoo... Solar is going big. Again. The federal government on Monday green-lit a 485-megawatt solar plant that would generate enough carbon-free electricity to power 180,000 homes when it comes online in the Southern California desert. During the Great Recession, that was nothing unusual about billions of dollars in federal stimulus money fueling big green dreams of carpeting the Mojave Desert with giant solar power plants on government-owned land, a cornerstone of the Obama administration’s efforts to fight climate change. That land, however, often turned out to be home to desert tortoises, blunt-nosed leopard lizards, and other endangered wildlife. Many of those projects went belly-up in part because of fierce opposition from environmental groups. That prompted an effort by the federal government to be “smart from the start” about where it allowed big renewable energy plants to be built. So the Blythe Mesa Solar Project, which was approved Monday, will deploy tens of thousands of solar panels across 3,587 acres of already disturbed or fallow farmland where wheat, alfalfa, and citrus had been grown. No desert tortoises will be harmed. That won Blythe the support of Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, the Wilderness Society, and other big environmental groups that previously opposed other solar power plant projects. “Due to the previously disturbed condition of nearly all the land proposed for the project, numerous environmental organizations supported the project because it conformed with our recommended criteria for siting large-scale projects in the California desert,” Jeff Aardahl, California representative for Defenders of Wildlife, said in an email. The project’s developer, Renewable Resources Group, is a Los Angeles company that invests in green energy and agriculture. “We specialize in developing utility-scale solar…projects on previously disturbed private land,” Tom Eisenhauer, a spokesperson for the firm, said in an email. Communities that find such gargantuan renewable energy projects in their midst also are getting smarter. Riverside County last year imposed a $150-per-acre annual fee on solar power plants and will collect nearly $500,000 a year from the Blythe project. RELATED: The Innovation That Lets Low-Income People Profit From the Solar Energy Boom That the Blythe project is moving forward is also a sign that solar energy is becoming increasingly competitive with fossil fuels. Earlier huge solar power plants had only been commercially viable thanks to a 30 percent federal tax credit. That incentive is set to fall to 10 percent at the end of 2016, meaning the Renewable Resources Group likely thinks it can make money without the government largesse. Hurdles remain. The company must still sign a long-term power purchase agreement with a utility that wants to buy the electricity generated by the project. If the California legislature passes a pending bill requiring the state to obtain half its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, there will likely be no shortage of buyers of solar energy. “We don’t discuss PPA status, but we’re planning for commercial operation in the next few years—and we feel good about that,” said Eisenhauer. Aardahl said the battle to generate clean, green energy while protecting desert wildlife continues despite the approval of projects like Blythe. “I don’t think that one project sited in an environmentally appropriate location signals that ‘smart from the start’ planning is now the norm,” he said. “Although there are many such projects, most of which are on disturbed private lands, some continue to be proposed on public land we consider inappropriate.” Related stories on TakePart: • Here's Something to Look Forward to—the Sun Could Be the World's Top Source of Energy in 2050 • The U.S. Government Has Invested $34 Billion in Renewable Energy—and It’s Making a Profit Original article from TakePart Poster Comment: The Professor ... The BIG PUSH to replace fossil fuels is asserted to be climate change due to increased CO2 in the atmosphere. But, not a person has been killed by increasing CO2 in the atmosphere. Not one! Billions will die if we lack the energy to drive civilization. Half the daily bread for the people on the planet depend NOW on fertilizers made with natural gas. There is a need to replace fossil fuels, properly and economically, but the economics of renewables is known to rely on subsidy and will until it competes in the open market. Governments are WASTING tax payer money on the Quixotic quest!5-6 An Engineer ... THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION DISAGREES Climate change is already claiming lives ----------------------------------------------------- Climate change has already claimed many lives worldwide through deaths, disease and injury. Between the mid-1970s and 2000, climate change was estimated to have caused over 150,000 deaths and 5.5 million disability adjusted life years (DALYs) per year worldwide.3-5 JYD... Sure. Climate change has always been a contributor to the death of earth's species. Always has been and always will be. Note that nothing in your post implies that humans are to blame. And if it did it would be a ludicrous unproveable assumption. Keep trying imbecile. Shills gotta be shills.2-1 Real... JYD- Give your idiocy a REST. I am a scientist. Previous to the advent of the age of oil/gasoline burning/automobiles, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was about 250 parts per million for hundreds of thousands of years. (scientists know this by measuring the CO2 in ancient air bubbles which are embedded in deep sedimentary ice, in the Arctic and Antarctica). As our burning of coal, oil and other fossil fuels has increased, the CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing steadily by about 1-2 parts per million per year to it's present measured level of 391 parts per million. As environments/eco-systems warm/change many plants, animals and fish will be unable to adapt to these rapidly changing climactic/vegetation changes and face extinction. Although CO2 levels have been much higher in the ancient past, the higher CO2 levels happened GRADUALLY and animals had time to evolve/adapt/migrate to deal with these radical changes in temperature, vegetation and rainfall. Sometimes these changes happened over tens of millions of years. When CO2 levels DID rise rapidly in the past, there was an accompanying large extinction event that happened along with it. The increases in CO2, and accompanying climate changes happening now, have occured over the last 150 years. This is not enough time for animals, plants and marine life to adapt. CO2 can take HUNDREDS of years to cycle out of the atmosphere, so this means gasoline/CO2 we burned in the year 1900 may still be floating around in the upper atmosphere. This, as we continuously pump more CO2 into the air 24 hours a day/7 days a week/365 days a year, worldwide. The C02 pumped into the atmosphere has accelerated this by 1000s of times normal fluctuation. Science is united behind this. The paid GOP and oil company posters on 1000s of sites work on the premise of denying real facts and worldwide science. The hole in the ozone caused by fluorocarbons was the last scientific shocker, but we banded together to get rid of the causes. Now the ozone hole has stopped growing and reversed course completely. There were doubters then, as well. Science won and so did mankind. Trust me, I wouldn't lie to you. Use common sense. What's happening now is nowhere near normal, and is accelerating at an unseen pace due to burning of hundreds of millions of tons of fossil fuels. We are killing earth. -2 Baron.... How much Natural Gas is this one going to burn? The Associated Press reports that Ivanpah, which was supposed to provide power for 140,000 homes, is only producing at half-capacity due to factors such as a lack of sun, jet contrails, and weather. The AP also notes: State energy regulators in August approved the plant’s request to increase the natural gas it is allowed to burn by 60 percent. Additional natural gas could also be needed to operate boilers when clouds thicken or to maintain output at the end of the day and extend the capability for power production, the company said. LarryL... Solar energy is the democrats' dream. It finally allows them to tax sunlight. 3-5 Post Comment Private Reply Ignore Thread Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest
#1. To: Tatarewicz (#0)
Although it fluctuates during a short period of 100 million years or so, for billions of years, the earth has been losing CO2 in the atmosphere and now the atmosphere is CO2 starved. We need more not less CO2 in the atmosphere. That would enhance plant growth that absorbs sunlight resulting in cooling; not heating. Regardless, CO2 is a trace gas at 1 molecule per 3,000. Therefore, it has nothing to do with global warming (well it might contribute a fraction of 1 percent), even if there was global warming. The greenhouse effect is the result water vapor and there is lots of water vapor; just look at the clouds. A short time ago, 500 million ago, there was 20 times as much CO2 and the temperature was about the same as now. Due to many factors, the temperture rises and falls. When it rises the oceans give up CO2 to the atmosphere so the CO2 level rises and that is why it has rising, not human activity. Now there are indications we are about to go into another mini-ice-age and that will result in less CO2 in the atmosphere as the oceans absorb more CO2. There is a lag of a few dozen years between temperature and CO2 levels. Regardless, while it is nice to have the solar panels, they can only supplement traditional forms of generating energy, because there is no sunshine at night and batteries are far too expensive, they will not store much energy, and they don't last very long. Who would pay a fortune to replace batteries every three years?
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