Last week, San Bernardino county officials sought to stop progress on BrightSource Energy’s giant concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the Mojave Desert. Land mitigation was the main complaint this time around, but BrightSource has been drawing flak for habitat destruction (desert tortoise) and water use (despite using a “dry loop” cooling technology, the solar thermally-generated power will of course still use a lot of the desert’s most precious resource). In order to address these concerns, the solar energy company has released a new plan for the Ivanpah, California facility. The new design reduces the total solar capacity of the project from 440 MW to 392 MW (a loss of 48 MW). According to Renewable Energy World, the new plan will:

Reduce the footprint of the third Ivanpah plant by 23 percent

Reduce the footprint of the overall Ivanpah project by about 12 percent

Reduce expected desert tortoise relocations by approximately 15 percent

Avoid the area identified as having the highest rare plant density

Reduce overall number of towers at the Ivanpah project from seven to three

Reduce the potential maximum number of heliostats by about 40,000

To this observer, BrightSource is being accommodating past expectations. It would be nice if real estate developments, leisure facilities, and highway construction through delicate ecosystems ever got half as much press as this one solar development–but when you’re literally breaking ground in a new industry, you do have to deal with the consequences of having the spotlight turned full on your actions.