Just as the time becomes ripe for a major push towards clean, cheap sources of electricity, the Bureau of Land Management has put a two-year stumbling block in the path of solar power development. In response to the clamor of proposals submitted for solar plants—130 since 2005—the Bureau has decided to put a hold on further development, claiming that that an exhaustive environmental impact report must be completed before solar plants can be installed on federally owned lands.
Such a disproportionate justification for suppressing solar initiative doesn’t fly with environmentalists, who must feel like their political tool (the EIS) has been co-opted by a darker force (and just in time to coincide with the expiration of the renewable energy tax credits, which were left to die out of apathy). Alas, perhaps, for the Mojave ground squirrel (a species allegedly threatened by the solar development), but anything that actively interferes with the success of clean, renewable energy strikes me not only as useless or odd, but actually dangerous.
As the New York Times reports:
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”
Failure to cooperate with the advancement of new sources of renewable, American energy is not only bad for nascent solar industries: it is poor policy for the economy as a whole. As the price of oil continues to rise, buoying inflation and commodity prices along with it, the transition to more sustainable sources of energy will be crucial in order to avoid severe economic repercussions. The price of gas has exceeded $4 a gallon in many parts of the country (it was well over $4.50 in northern California this weekend), and resistance to further exacerbating energy costs has prevented even the most ineffective climate legislation from passing. And yet we seem to be missing out on the obvious solution: make clean, renewable energy cheaper.
Even if the moratorium on solar plants in public lands does not entirely smother the solar industry—after all, privately owned lands are still fair game—it is symbolic of a structural failure to fully acknowledge and understand the problems we face, or embrace progressive and effective policies to solve them. As the renewable energy tax credits gasp their final, rattling breath, and H.R. 6049 “The Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act” inauspiciously slips through Congress, President Bush has proposed the end to a ban on offshore drilling (an endeavor that really merits an environmental impact assessment!) and a new era of, well, more oil.
Why? Though the answer may lie with oil interests, there is a deeper trend. In his most recent New York Times op-ed, Thomas Friedman laments the current state of the union and insists that we need to rebuild a dysfunctional nation. He writes that, “It’s the state of America now that is the most gripping source of anxiety for Americans,” adding that “our political system seems incapable of producing long-range answers to big problems or big opportunities,” a myopia which is only too evident in a policy such as the BLM’s, and in the absurd fuel solutions proposed by the current administration. He goes on to say:
I continue to be appalled at the gap between what is clearly going to be the next great global industry — renewable energy and clean power — and the inability of Congress and the administration to put in place the bold policies we need to ensure that America leads that industry.
We are living in a dangerous time, a time of crisis. Out of this danger comes opportunity, and a choice. We can choose to continue along unsustainable pathways of oil dependency and economic disaster, putting up impediments to essential new industries and providing “life support” in the form of subsidies to the mature ones in decline. Or we can choose to refresh America with the power of a truly novel era, letting go of that which is no longer politically or economically strategic and cultivating that which will lead us into an age of clean energy and prosperity. It seems that, so far, we have only chosen the former.
Image source: NY Times
The Mojave Ground Squirrel? Sounds like good eats… ;-)
Seriously, this looks like the proverbial chickens coming home to roost. All the rules promulgated on energy development are now stopping ALL the different types of energy development. I still wonder why we can’t take a portfolio approach (i.e., some solar, some efficiency, some nuclear, etc.)? Especially with these restrictions, we need a wide variety of options.
“an exhaustive environmental impact report”?
I wonder how exhaustive are we really talking here and how is that possible if we don’t have that many solar plants. Can’t environmentalists just argue that it will help the economy? Perhaps people are not understanding that the portfolio approach and sustainable development in general means that there will be mistakes, and fear of mistakes should not stop us from taking the risk. Opponents will argue that we need to be more risk averse or else we are going to funding too many programs that don’t do anything and wasting money. It is a reasonable argument in the sense that we do need to be assessing the effectiveness of all the projects that get funded in order to identify which ones are working. But it is actually more efficient if you try more different things in parallel. So in the interest of figuring something that works asap, we should be willing to try more things. I hope that made sense.
Portfolio is a necessity. Even on current grids, different sources serve different functions. After a blackout, hydro is valuable since it does not require outside power (i.e., the first to go back on line and restart the grid). Nuclear and coal provide baseload while natural gas and wind provide swing and peak loads. No one source can do it all.