Wind, solar, geothermal and other so-called green energy
sources might not spew greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, but they're far
from benign.
Ask any bird conservationist what she or he thinks of wind
farms and you might get a less-than-glowing response. Back in 2005, the U.S.
Fish and Wildlife Agency put migratory bird mortality due to wind turbines
somewhere around 440,000 each year. And solar power developers made no friends
among the conservation world when the Ivanpah solar project in Southern
California and adjacent to the
butted up against the endangered desert tortoise. The project was stalled as
many hundreds of the reptiles were relocated.
“For a couple of years I was basically in cardiac
arrest,” says Ileene Andrerson, a biologist with the . “Because of the amount of land to be developed [for renewable energy] and
the piecemeal approach.”
Anderson is referring to the years following the American
Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, during which companies filed
hundreds of project applications for mostly solar but also wind projects on
land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, which had $350 million in ARRA
funds with which it was mandated to “restore landscapes and habitat, spur
renewable energy development on public lands, and create jobs.”
That looks great on paper, but environmental groups quickly
raised red flags over where the renewable energy developments would be sited
and what oversight (or lack thereof) would be placed on them. This effectively
pitted greens against greens in what looked like a counterproductive, senseless
battle. But Bobby McEnaney, land policy analyst with the ,
contends that the efforts the NRDC and similar groups have made to ensure
renewable energy is developed with minimal negative impacts on wildlife,
recreation access and cultural resources were rooted in lessons learned from
decades of oil and gas development on public lands.
“Solar and wind energy developers would probably prefer
the laissez-faire approach, which is what oil and gas developers have had on
BLM land,” McEnaney says. “But two wrongs don鈥檛 make a right.”
In an attempt to address this concern and make the process
for permitting solar power on public lands more efficient, on October 12
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar signed a record of decision approving the
for commercial grade solar
energy development on public lands on six Southwestern states. Yes, that is as
wonky as it sounds. But the PEIS is important because it defines 17 areas
called Solar Energy Zones (SEZs), which have been selected as most appropriate for
solar energy development based on a number of criteria, including their
vicinity to existing transmission lines and the relatively low impact development
would have on wildlife and “cultural resources.”
So what are cultural resources? They're areas that are of
cultural significance to Native Americans, but this category also includes
tracts under wilderness designations and those containing recreational trails
within their viewsheds. In other words, the SEZs are sited such that you're not
likely to gain the summit after a long, hot hike, only to look down upon a massive
solar array.
Before the PEIS was developed, there were 80 million acres
of public land open to solar energy development. The 17 Solar Energy Zones
(SEZs) total about 285,000 acres, so the available land
has been significantly reduced. But if fully built out, projects in the
designated areas could produce as much as 23,700 megawatts of solar energy,
enough to power approximately seven million American homes, according to Department
of Interior. Plus, the final PEIS has still held a legal door open to another
19 million acres of land, called “variance” areas, where solar development
may be permitted.
The NRDC, Center for Biological Diversity, and other
environmental groups that worked with the BLM to draft the PEIS are not fans of
these variance areas, but they see the establishment of a programmatic approach
to solar siting on BLM land to be a major achievement and a win-win for
conservation, public access and energy developers.
The SEZs also make development more efficient and less
costly for energy developers, says Craig Mortimore, renewable energy coordinator for the .
“There is one NEPA clearance for each zone, whereas normally, each energy
developer would have to undertake NEPA on their own,” he says, referring
to the National Environmental Policy Act, which is the framework for
environmental impact reviews required on federal land.
CONNECTIVITY
As the climate changes, a number of animal species are
already starting to adjust their migration patterns, so keeping wildlife
corridors unimpeded by energy development was also a key consideration is
siting the solar projects. “It was frightening to see the desert cut up without
concern for connectivity,” says Anderson about the earlier tracts that the
BLM had initially opened for solar development.
Keeping corridors open for species movement is important not
just with respect to the location solar arrays but also the transmission lines
that connect them to the electrical grid. This is an issue very near to the
heart of Adam Bradley, a distance hiker who followed the 501-mile path of the
proposed Southwest Intertie Project (SWIP), a 500kV AC transmission line
stretching between Idaho and southern Nevada. The line plays an important role
in renewable energy development, as it links and carries wind and solar energy
from southern Idaho to southern Nevada. Bradley hiked its proposed path to
better understand the potential impacts the line would have on the Nevada
landscape and its wildlife.
Bradley undertook the hike (with the support of
the Nevada Wilderness Project) to highlight the possibilities for
conservation groups and energy developers to work together. The main concerns
around the line's proposed path were that it would potentially impact critical
sage-grouse habitat, and that power lines are often used as hunting perches for
raptors, which would increase the threats to the sage-grouse.
In the end, Bradley says, the line was rerouted around the most
sensitive landscapes, and some towers designed to prevent raptors from nesting
were used.
鈥擬ary Catherine O'Connor