Saturday, January 2, 2010

Green v. Green?

Jane Graham, guest blogger, LLM student and future National Wildlife Federation intern, shares her thoughts on a pending California law and a lawsuit in West Virginia involving renewable energy projects and conservation. She can be reached at janecynthiagraham@gmail.com

In a vacuum, almost anyone with a predilection for the environment would agree with two universal truths: 1) renewable alternative energy sources should be developed, and 2) the beauty of the natural environment should be preserved. However, several clashes within the last few weeks between alternative energy developers and conservationists have highlighted a growing fracture within the environmentalist community.

The first clash involves solar panels in the Mojave Desert. Last week, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California announced plans to introduce legislation establishing two national monuments on about one million acres of the Mojave Desert. Bighorn sheep, desert tortoises, and a rare species of lizard are among the area’s residents, amongst the extinct volcanoes and sand dunes. As part of proposed legislation, the Mojave Trails National Monument will be designated, and development over its 941,000 acres will be prohibited. As David Myers, executive director of the Wildlands Conservancy stated, “To a large extent this land is the connective tissue that holds the desert together.”

The designation of a new federally protected area sounds like a win-win situation, until you find out that these sites were formerly tapped as places for solar panel development. This new legislation could make it more difficult for California utilities to have a third of their electricity generated from renewable sources by 2020, as projects in the newly designated monument area could have supplied a large portion of power. In fact, in an effort to avoid a conflict with the federal government, a variety of alternative energy companies, including BrightSource Energy Inc. and Stirling Energy Systems scrapped plans to build a massive solar and wind farm in Sleeping Beauty Valley, a stretch of the proposed Mojave Trails monument.

Nevertheless, will this proposed legislation affect development of alternative energy in California in the long run? Just a few days before Senator Feinstein introduced the Mojave legislation, she introduced legislation to provide a 30% tax credit to developers that consolidate degraded private land for solar panels. Thus, there is a push to develop these renewable energy projects on lands already disturbed by development, instead of an untouched area of wilderness.

Whereas the Mojave Trails National Monument protects an extensive ecological system spanning over thousands of acres and multiple species, the second clash involves one specific species, the endangered Indiana Bat, versus a $300 million wind farm in West Virginia. The Indiana Bat is a brownish-gray critter, weighing about as much as three pennies and, with wings outstretched, measures about eight inches. A 2005 estimate concluded that there were 457,000 of them, half as many as in 1967, when they were first listed as endangered. Local populations hibernate in limestone caves within miles of the wind farm. Reports have shown that wind turbines have killed thousands of bats, who are either sucked in by the turbine’s blades, or die of barotrauma, a condition in bats similar to the bends in humans, where its lungs hemorrhage due to low pressure areas.

The Animal Welfare Institute and the Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy sued Beech Ridge Energy and its parent, Invenergy LLC, claiming the 119-turbine Beech Ridge project in Greenbrier County, West Virginia violated the federal Endangered Species Act. According to the lawsuit, the wind farm was likely to kill and injure endangered bats and the developers had not obtained an incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

These incidental take permits are required when landowners, companies, state or local governments build projects that might harm wildlife that is listed as endangered or threatened. On December 10th, U.S. District Judge Roger Titus ruled in the Animal Welfare Institute’s favor, stating that Invenergy cannot move forward with its $300 million dollar wind farm project until it had obtained a federal incidental take permit from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, in order to minimize harm to the bats. These permits could be used to set out conditions for the wind farm’s operation, such as restricting times of its operation to minimize interference with the bats migration season.These two recent events demonstrate two examples of conservation placed as a priority before alternative energy. Is this a trend, or two random events? Who will win the fight of alternative energy development and conservation? It appears that these events might be forbearers of many more disputes to come. As a devout environmentalist and animal lover, my first inclination is to take the side of bats and lizards. But are lawsuits the most effective way of providing a check on this type of development? Where do you stand on this issue?

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/business/energy-environment/22solar.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-mojave21-2009dec21,0,7093884.story

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5heLpUHGhj8UufslEJiQAjK0OocSQD9CG1ITO0

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12/09/AR2009120904106.html?hpid=sec-metro
Posted by at 9:15 AM
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4 comments:

  1. You pose the question "Who will win the fight of alternative energy development and conservation?" Our challenge is to not have this be a fight but instead work together to acheive both goals.

    Part of this challenge is to also not fall into the frame of "green vs. green" that you have painted. This has been a tempting frame for the mainstream media since it helps sell newspapers and drive internet traffic to news websites that also sell advertising.

    Our challenge as thoughtful people who care about both shifting to renewable energy and also protecting the environment in the process is to work together and work carefully to make sure these two goals can both be met. Yes, there is a need to expedite the shift to renewable energy but it is erroneous to think that we should expedite this shift at the expense of other biodiversity and other natural resources.

    The effort that has gone into crafting Senator Feinstein's bill is a case where a strong and successful attempt has been made to meet this challenge. I urge you to examine and reflect on this legislation more closely than your blog post reports.

    Fully one-third of the approximately 180 pages in Senator Feinstein's proposed legislation are devoted to promoting and expediting renewal energy development in a sensible way. The 12/21/2009 news release on the Senator's website announcing here desert legislation provides a summary that is worth reading (go to feinstein.senate.gov and look under her newsroom at the two press releases from 12/21/2009). I point this out because your blog post makes no mention of the fact that this is a very balance piece of legislation.

    This bill represents a unique opportunity for California to protect its most important and sensitive desert areas while leaving available suitable lands to meet its renewable energy commitments.

    According to the California Energy Commission staff, 128,000 acres of desert land are needed to meet California's renewable energy standard. Yet renewable energy projects have been proposed for more than 1,000,000 acres in the California desert. Clearly, not all of these projects are needed. We can afford to protect the most sensitive and scenic portions of the California desert while also meeting the goals defined in California’s renewable energy standard.

    The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is currently assessing the suitability of 351,000 acres in the California desert for potential renewable energy development, significantly more than is needed to meet state renewable energy goals. None of the lands in Senator Feinstein’s proposal are within these BLM study areas.

    I hope that after looking into the points I raise further you'll agree that paining the Senator's efforts in a "green versus green" frame of conflict isn't really appropriate and does a disservice to the efforts that have been made to both promote renewable energy while also protecting the environment.

    HG
    New Mexico
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  2. Here's a news story about the Feinstein bill that doesn't fall into the "green vs. green" frame:

    Land Letter (E&E Publishing)
    Thursday, January 7, 2010


    PUBLIC LANDS: Feinstein desert bill attempts to reconcile landscape protection, clean energy

    Scott Streater, E&E reporter

    When Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) announced a sweeping desert preservation bill last month, it garnered national attention for placing nearly 1 million acres of Mojave Desert off-limits to development -- a move that some believe would derail a dozen proposed solar-power projects.

    But a close reading of the "California Desert Protection Act" reveals a nuanced piece of legislation that includes several proposals to encourage renewable energy in the Mojave Desert and across the Southwest.

    Among them is a mandate that the Defense Department review several million acres of military lands in California, Arizona and Nevada, and identify suitable sites where wind farms, solar arrays and other renewable resources could be developed. The Pentagon would then conduct environmental impact statements to ensure projects move quickly through the permitting process.

    The bill would also require the Bureau of Land Management, the largest federal land management agency with 253 million acres in its portfolio, to locate parcels suitable for renewable energy development, giving the agency 12 months from the date the bill is enacted to complete the task. The Forest Service, which oversees 193 million acres, must complete a similar effort in 18 months.

    The bill would also attempt to break up the logjam of pending renewable-energy project permits, particularly in California, by setting firm deadlines for project applicants to conduct feasibility and environmental studies or risk having their lease thrown out.

    The aim is to not only speed up renewable energy development but place projects in locations that do not create environmental harm or disrupt recreational activities, officials familiar with the legislation said.

    In a strongly worded statement announcing the bill's introduction Dec. 21, Feinstein said the federal government "has failed to focus wind and solar development on appropriate lands where it can be readily permitted," and she criticized BLM for being "slow to direct development towards disturbed lands or to discourage proposals on lands acquired for the purpose of conservation."

    Feinstein added, "Bottom line: the permitting process is broken. It is not facilitating solar and wind development where it belongs. This legislation intends to fix that."

    Yet the bill has been widely perceived as having a chilling effect on solar-power development in the California desert, which contains some of the best solar resources in the nation. BLM is currently reviewing applications for 120 solar and wind-power projects in the region. About a dozen of those projects would be scrapped under Feinstein's bill.

    The Solar Energy Industries Association declined to comment on the legislation, saying officials still had not fully evaluated the sprawling bill. But Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a national environmental activist and partner with a venture capital firm that has invested in solar energy, told The New York Times last month that the Mojave Desert area in question "is arguably the best solar land in the world" and that Feinstein "shouldn't be allowed to take this land off the table without a proper and scientific environmental review."

    One project in the cross hairs of Feinstein's bill was a proposal by Houston-based Tessera Solar on roughly 12,000 acres of the Mojave that would be placed off limits to development. The company cancelled the project early last month, "partially in response in what we anticipated the senator might do," said Sean Gallagher, Tessera's vice president for market strategy and regulatory affairs.

    (continued in next post)
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  3. (continued from last post)

    However, the company has two other solar projects planned for sites outside Feinstein's proposed conservation area totaling 1,600 megawatts -- enough to power nearly 500,000 homes. Construction on those projects could begin later this year, according to Gallagher.

    And even though Tessera opted to ditch one piece of its Mojave development plan as a result of the bill's protected area requirements, Gallagher said his firm remains optimistic about other aspects of the bill. "We do think some of the provisions ... that are intended to speed renewables development do look promising," he said.

    BLM has conducted inventories of suitable sites for wind and geothermal power projects and is in the middle of a detailed study of 24 "solar study zones" in six Western states that should help identify the best locations for industrial-scale solar plants, said John Dearing, a BLM spokesman in Sacramento.

    Carl Zichella, director of Western renewable programs for the Sierra Club in Sacramento, said Feinstein's bill is another example of the federal government pushing to develop renewable energy the right way.

    "Fusing the conservation and renewable energy development together makes it a little awkward, but this is a real attempt at balance," Zichella said.

    Vast potential on military lands

    One priority of the Feinstein bill is to identify the renewable energy potential on the 25 million acres overseen by the Defense Department, including significant desert acreage in California, Nevada and Arizona. DOD would then conduct a blanket environmental impact statement (EIS) for parcels in those three states.

    The overall goal is to identify "zones where renewable energy production is in the public interest and where environmental approval of renewable energy projects can be expedited," according to the bill summary.

    Jerry Hansen, the Army's senior energy executive, said last month that the Army has already issued a directive that each base perform surveys to identify areas that are suitable to support renewable energy projects. And the Defense Department has a goal to produce 25 percent of its power needs from renewable energy sources by 2025 (Land Letter, Dec. 3, 2009).

    To meet that goal, the Pentagon has embarked on several recent major renewables projects, including a 500-megawatt concentrated solar facility at Fort Irwin, near Barstow, Calif., in the high Mojave Desert. The $1.5 billion project is a joint venture with Clark Energy Group and Acciona Solar Power and could be producing at full capacity by 2022, according to the Army.

    Industry observers and government regulators regard the use of military land as critical to achieving the dramatic expansion of renewable energy being pushed by the Obama administration. The reason is simple: Military sites, particularly in California and Nevada, "have thousands of disturbed acres which cannot be used for training and may be good places for renewable energy development," according to the bill summary.

    As a result, the Pentagon could help resolve what has become the leading obstacle to expanding renewable energy -- opposition to the siting of power plants in sensitive or pristine landscapes.

    "By requiring the military to evaluate the impacts of a program to develop its solar resource, the legislation ensures that all available public lands are properly considered for renewable energy development," Feinstein told Congress last month.

    Responsible renewable development

    The Feinstein bill also calls for expanding transmission infrastructure needed to move electricity from remote wind farms and solar arrays to population centers where the power is needed.
    The bill calls for establishing loan guarantees and grants to develop "new technologies" that allow for the expansion of electric transmission capacity "without requiring the permitting and construction of massive new towers," according to the bill summary.

    (continued in next post)
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  4. (continued from last post)

    The Obama administration has made the upgrade and expansion of tens of thousands of miles of transmission lines a centerpiece of its plans to expand the use of renewable energy. Six-and-a-half billion dollars provided under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is aimed at providing tax breaks and other incentives to build out the infrastructure necessary to move that "green power" from rural production areas to market.

    Most of the nation's high-voltage transmission lines have operated for decades with relatively little maintenance or upgrades, and many were never designed to transport electricity over great distances. Federal officials and industry experts say that transmission projects currently in the development pipeline will carry an additional 13,000 megawatts of electricity across the region by 2018, enough to power more than 10 million homes.

    But, as with the siting of the renewable energy projects themselves, finding suitable places to build transmission lines has been a major problem.

    The grants and guaranteed loans referenced in Feinstein's bill would aid in the development of underground transmission lines, reducing impacts to sensitive species like the greater sage grouse and alleviating the visual punch of large transmission projects in certain pristine locations.

    One problem is that underground transmission technology remains very expensive. An alternative approach -- developing high-tech power lines that could carry additional electricity along existing rights-of-way -- also needs more development, officials close to the legislation said.

    According to the bill summary: "By providing support for these innovations, grants and loan guarantees would help prove these emerging technologies in a cost effective public-private partnership."

    Streater writes from Colorado Springs, Colo.
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