Boiling Point: Burrowing owls and solar farms will need to coexist
- by Los Angeles Times
- Oct 15, 2024
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If you don’t love burrowing owls, you’ve probably never seen a burrowing owl.
They’re 7 to 10 inches tall, with bright yellow eyes and long, skinny legs. The western variety doesn’t even dig its own underground burrows. It depends on other critters, such as ground squirrels and desert tortoises.
Here’s a picture: It’s not just burrowing owl advocates who are concerned about the the consequences of solar sprawl. It’s desert tortoise advocates and Joshua tree advocates. It’s rural residents who don’t want solar in the backyards, and farmers who don’t want solar projects taking away cropland — even when they don’t have enough water for all their crops.
A solar project is surrounded by farmland in the San Joaquin Valley.
(Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
If only we could put all the solar panels we need to replace fossil fuels on rooftops, warehouses and parking lots, this problem would be easy to solve. Alas, even optimistic researchers say we wouldn’t come anywhere close.
There are also valuable opportunities to build solar in “low-harm” spots — abandoned farmlands, former mines, contaminated Superfund sites, oil and gas fields, landfills, even strips of land along highways. A report released this month by the Roosevelt Institute and the Climate and Community Institute estimated that the United States has nearly 226 million acres of such land — an order of magnitude more land than we’ll ever need for solar.
Again, if only the world were so simple.
Conservationists have been touting low-conflict solar sites for a long time; there have been optimistic reports like this one before. Yet so far, there have been only a handful of projects built in truly low-conflict spots, such as a set of solar panels over a canal that were switched on this month by Arizona’s Gila River Indian Community.
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There are lots of reasons for the dearth of progress. In some cases, the low-harm spots aren’t near electric lines, which are needed to send power to customers; in others, developers aren’t willing to take on the financial liability of building on a toxic Superfund site. Some private landowners aren’t willing to sell — not currently a problem on federal lands, where the Biden administration has made renewable energy development a top priority.
“If you have a site that’s relatively flat, and it’s got low species conflict, and you don’t have developers flocking to it, then you have a problem with that area,” said Shannon Eddy, executive director of the Large-scale Solar Assn.
So I like the idea of more solar on low-harm lands. I hope it happens. But scientists say we have six years to slash climate pollution more than 40%. So for now, I plan to keep penning columns like this one, supporting flawed but well-meaning efforts by the Biden administration and others to balance renewable energy and conservation.
And as for burrowing owls?
The Large-scale Solar Assn. supports endangered species protections for the tiny bird. Eddy told me her member companies spent much of this year preparing for last week’s vote, identifying 15 project sites in the Central Valley and Imperial Valley with signs of owl habitation and working with biologists to craft a conservation strategy.
Still, developers have some concerns about how the process will play out. There will now be new permits to apply for, new financial obstacles to clear. Depending on what state wildlife officials do next, solar companies could find themselves facing new delays and costs that make it even harder for California to meet its climate goals.
“This is a curveball,” Eddy said.
On that note, here’s what else is happening around the West:
THE ENERGY TRANSITION
The site of the Thacker Pass lithium mine, now under construction, on federal land in northern Nevada.
(Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
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It’s not just solar farms creating conflicts. In Nevada, federal officials are preparing to approve a lithium mine — which would produce a key ingredient for electric cars’ batteries — despite pleas from conservationists who say the mine would drive an endangered wildflower to extinction, the Associated Press’ Scott Sonner reports.
Not all lithium mining is so environmentally damaging. But even in California’s Imperial County — where lithium could be extracted with relatively few effects at geothermal power plants — some residents are frustrated with the county supervisors for approving a plan that would funnel lithium tax dollars from Salton Sea-area extraction sites to more populous cities farther from the sea. Details here from Kori Suzuki, reporting for KPBS.
The less energy we use, the less lithium we’ll need to mine, and the fewer solar farms we’ll need to build. Alas, artificial intelligence and data center development are driving energy demand higher than they need to be. My L.A. Times colleague Roger Vincent touched on that issue in this story about One Wilshire, in my opinion the most fascinating building in Los Angeles. He describes it as “the mother of all data centers in the West.”
An even worse consequence of ballooning demand for data centers and artificial intelligence: U.S. electric utilities are planning to build loads of new gas-fired power plants. Details here from Canary Media’s Jeff St. John.
Finally, let’s check in with the U.S. Supreme Court. In a win for climate, the justices left in place a federal rule requiring oil and gas companies to reduce methane emissions from existing wells. They also declined to block a Biden administration rule that will require Montana’s Colstrip coal plant to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in cutting air pollution. That could force Colstrip to close — or not, per Amanda Eggert at the Montana Free Press.
For background on Colstrip’s historic role on the Western power grid, see my deep dive from earlier this year.
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The Stakes on Climate
Oct 11, 2024
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