Will solar energy prove a win-win for wildlands?

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For all of you who have expressed concern about environmental degradation associated with large scale solar developments, please be advised that the BLM has begun the scoping process for approval of a pair of 500 kV transmission lines to transmit power from proposed wind and solar energy development sites in New Mexico to meet the state mandated renewable energy requirements of AZ, NV, and CA. You can obtain more information at the BLM and project websites: www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/more/lands_realty/sunzia_southwest_transmissio... www.sunzia.net/index.php#. The Wilderness Society issued a press release on May 29, 2009, the date of the Federal Register notice of BLM's intent to prepare an EIS for the project, applauding the proposal "to responsibly develop a power transmission system that would harness clean, renewable energy in New Mexico and Arizona." I submit that it is simply wrongheaded to build 460 miles of transmission lines and related infrastructure (most of which will be located in NM) to develop renewable energy for growing cities in other states. As many of the other comments note, renewable energy should be developed in proximity to where it is used.

As a TWS member and a desert resident, I doubly regret the apparent emphasis on large "solar" plants in my desert. In reality these plants are merely yesterday's technology (electric generation with steam turbines), merely replacing the energy from coal or gas with the sun. As your article states we do have the power to determine where our electricity comes from, and this should be first from photovoltaic solar on rooftops, over parking lots and any other available flat places in the urban built environment. In Spain there are even PV panels above a cemetery; even the dead can help with our energy crisis. This and energy conservation, which is the cheapest and fastest source of "new": energy, should be the emphasis of TWS.
Considering the lead time to permit, finance and construct large energy plants, if there is really an energy crisis then the fastest way to address it is PV in urban areas (plus small peaking plants if necessary) and energy efficiency. Until urban areas areas are covered with PV (accompanied by a reasonable feed in tariff) as far as I am concerned it will be a cold day in Hell before I stop fighting by any means possible the sacrifice of my wild desert.

Please consider wind energy in your discussion/actions regarding the appropriate installations of renewables. I own land in scenic northern new mexico along a historic byway that may be covered in 40 story high wind farms. They are an eyesore to say the least!! They will also need a road to ea. windmill and the transmission lines. They also make noise, harm birds, and may be lit at night. The leases are not favorable to land owners. In the name of going green, our iconic and beloved western landscape will be harmed and altered forever. Please let me know if you are addressing this issue in any way
Sincerely
Jill Meyerhofer

Thank you everyone for your comments and feedback - we know that this is an ongoing discussion and a process that is going to continue evolving over months and years, and we are working to find solutions to this critical issue.
What is clear is that inaction is not an option - climate change and the rising cost of energy are forcing a debate over everything, from increased domestic production of oil and gas to conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy and transmission. We are focused on ensuring that as we transition to renewables, the government is careful with our public lands and takes a hard look at what makes the most sense. If and how much of SESAs are in fragile desert ecosystems with high conservation value is exactly what we are looking at, and we are pushing the agencies to refine their SESAs to avoid places with truly unacceptable impacts.
We are glad we now have the opportunity to help shape the places, pace, and practices that will be used by industry in developing renewable energy on our public lands, something we've never had with oil and gas. Energy development is a legitimate use of public lands - we all use energy - but development is not appropriate everywhere. We are working to guide renewables development to degraded lands such as Brownfields and other less sensitive lands (public or private) and are pushing the agencies to adopt principles for renewables development that protects our wildlands (see blog post above for links).
To us, ensuring renewable energy development avoids the mistakes of the Bush administration’s “drill everywhere” oil and gas program means pushing intelligent, forward thinking policy and finding the most appropriate places for renewables. There are and will no doubt continue to be significant challenges along the way – we are working to meet those challenges, and welcome you to join us.

Since the early 1960s I've wondered at the approach to solar of conventional business. (Back then they said that solar energy wouldn't be feasible until the next century and I wondered if the issue was control--since solar must be collected in small amounts over a very large area--but one answer to that was obvious even then--rooftop solar collection in cities and their suburbs.
If this is not practicable would someone please explain why?
My comment to the PEIS follows:
A central question for solar energy production is how to have the least negative impact on the environment.
The most sensible place to put solar collectors is on roof tops of houses in the suburbs of cities, roofs that are otherwise unoccupied space.
Accurate measurement of the amount of energy produced might be complicated, but this would be more than offset by residents using the energy their own system produces first, in the process reducing energy loss in transmission over distances.
It would also save the enormous amount of land occupied by conventional commercial solar collectors.
Of course this would not entail BLM land, but it would save BLM land for more environmentally sound uses.

New industrial-scale power plants of any type, whether solar, wind, or "dirty" need to be restricted to previously disturbed land, adjacent to existing transmission lines. The desert is a fragile ecosystem that is not well understood. The current plans will have devastating effects well beyond the boundaries of proposed projects. For every remote project site, new roads for heavy equipment will be bulldozed. This will result in habitat fragmentation for native species, movement barriers for migratory species, and introduction of invasive non-native species. Building of thousands of miles of high-voltage transmission lines will have similar results. In addition, the water used for these projects (many of which operate by boiling water, and all of which use water for cooling and cleaning) will deplete already overtaxed desert aquifers. Even a small drop in the water table can dry up agricultural lands, grazing lands, and residential wells. Where is the "tipping point"? Nobody knows. More study is needed before the cumulative effect of dozens, or hundreds, of industrial-scale power-generating plants can be known. The standard environmental reviews should not be bypassed; they should be strengthened and expanded.
Of course, climate change is happening now and we need to implement solutions as soon as possible. Local power generation, as mentioned above, can be built much quicker. If rooftops of "big-box" stores and covered parking lots are covered with solar panels, no environmental review is needed. Billions of dollars of financing on credit are not needed. The process can begin immediately, as a "pay-as-you-go" project, with stimulus money going to local contractors rather than giant energy corporations. In additon, localized power generation produces a distributed energy grid which is less vulnerable to wildfires, earthquakes, hurricanes, or terrorist acts.
Some people argue that localized power generation is economically unfeasible. If you look closely at the data, those who make this claim are using different standards when computing costs. For example, they do not factor in the cost of building new transmission when determining the cost of remote solar farms, and they do not factor in economy of scale when calculating the cost of rooftop solar.
Some people argue that localized power generation is insufficient to meet our future energy demands. In combination with energy efficiency and conservation, localized power would be sufficient. But if not, a few industrial power plants could be built where they make sense-- on previously degraded land adjacent to existing transmission corridors.

I am constantly baffled by the Big Enviros' desperate push to locate all the (ahem) "renewable" energy projects into our nation's wilderness, while completely ignoring the built environment, which has more than enough rooftop space to power 100% of the US' electricity needs (per the DOE, using only super-cheap thin film PV - this is not debatable). There is no excuse for a single acre of open space to be permanently destroyed for Big Energy profits, no matter how much propaganda and greenwashing is pushed out there by Big Solar, Big Wind, and Big Transmission profiteers.
Why hasn't Wilderness Society been on the front lines pushing hard for generous feed in tariffs and property-owner loans so that WE can all install PV on our roofs, install new efficiency measures, drastically cut our consumption, and be paid for producing more clean power than we consume? Why hasn't Wilderness Society consistently and unremittingly demanded that the built environment be fully developed for energy conservation and power production before a single acre of our precious ecosystems are destroyed? This is clearly a much faster process than 10+ years for Big Energy Boondoggles, so in the 5 years that have been wasted bickering about how to enrich Big Energy on the backs of taxpayers, ratepayers and the planet, we could have installed hundreds of thousands of mW of rooftop solar, improved property values, increased grid reliability and reduced grid congestion, and kept everyone employed, without costing ratepayers or taxpayers ANYTHING (generators are paid for power, non-generators pay far far far less per mWh than under a utility-infrastructure-profit matrix, since most power is consumed at point of generation).
Remote, centralized power, aside from being environmentally devastating (destroyed carbon sinks, enormous water waste, permanent destruction of migration corridors and species habitats, increased sandstorms, herbicides, concrete, steel, salt cake, SF6 increasing global warming - you name it), is also monopolistic, unreliable, extremely expensive, eminent-domain intensive and completely un-democratic.
With respect, you and Mr. Salazar are on a path that will lead to enormous economic and environmental destruction, even though all the facts are against you. I encourage you to immediately re-think your position on these matters, so that there is at least a small chance that good solutions can prevail over these awful programs.

The SEIS process sounds good on paper.
However, on the ground — which is, after all, where these projects will live eventually — the department of the Interior has in no way excluded sensitive lands or lands with important conservation value from consideration.
Take one example, the Bullard Wash Tract between Kingman and Wickenburg in Arizona, which is of immense conservation value when it comes to the future of the Joshua tree. The Riverside East Tract includes the Eagle Mountain area, surrounded on three sides by Joshua Tree National Park, which grassroots environmentalists have defended from one developer after another for decades, with Big Solar merely the latest developer to come down the pike. That same tract covers prime desert tortoise habitat and some of California's wildest ironwood bosques, as well as a number of other pieces of the fragile Mojave-Colorado desert threshold. The Amargosa Valley tract in Nevada, if developed with concentrating solar, would draw down an already overdrafted aquifer. (It takes a lot of water to get the dust off those mirrors.) Drawing down the aquifer even farther would almost certainly doom the endangered, and celebrated, Devil's Hole pupfish.
It's understandable that many in the mainstream environmental movement have decided our public wildlands are suitable bargaining chips in our current game of ClimatePolitick. I would have hoped the Wilderness Society would have its head screwed on a little straighter than that. You folks are supposed to be a voice for our beleaguered wildlands. It's disappointing to find you not only acquiescing to their loss, but in fact applauding it.