Solar Power: not green enough?

It’s a huge relief to many that the reality of climate change is sinking in for politicians, not to mention the general populace. Advocates of clean energy are, deservedly, among the happiest–yet for the first time, such advocates are finding themselves pitted against environmentalists, groups that have hitherto been strongly supportive of each other in the fight to get climate change taken seriously. Methods for addressing global warming have gone in hand in hand with the cause of clean energy activists: one of the largest-impact methods of reducing GHG emissions is to turn to low-carbon energy sources. Namely, renewable technologies like solar power, wind, geothermal and biomass.

So what’s the problem, you ask? The problem is that solar, like wind, needs a lot of room to do what it does. Turbine arms can catch only so much wind; photovoltaics panels can catch only so much sun. You need hundreds of acres to begin to supply a power plant on anything of a municipally useful magnitude. And because solar functions so well in the desert, where peak sun hours are usually untarnished by pesky things like cloudcover or rain, the vast empty tracts of our southwestern states have become the natural targets of solar developers’ plans. In one way, this seems perfect: largely uninhabitable land performing a highly valuable service for our communities. Such land can be found all over states such as Nevada, New Mexico, California, Texas–arid, unfriendly, and cheap. But, as Time, the New York Times, and others have been reporting, environmentalists say that solar presents more of a threat to the desert ecosystem than industry experts want to admit, and that we’re heading down the wrong path by pursuing these sites.

Desert ecology is nearly as fragile as the skin of a cactus is tough. It doesn’t make sense to the naked eye, but there you have it. Environmentalists, and desert residents who live near proposed solar plants sites because they love the look and feel of the desert, are deeply upset that solar developers seem to be ignoring their warnings about the damage solar could do to these landscapes and the creatures that live there.

One solution, argue the environmentalists, is to focus on distributed generation rather than power plants. Distributed generation would put more panels on the roofs of homes and businesses, avoiding centralized power plants for energy generation. The problem with this, argue solar proponents right back, is that the grid is left high and dry in that scenario–you need centralized power generation for reliability and best fucntioning.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will have his hands full trying to navigate the best path forward, keeping in mind responsibility to protect fragile ecosystems for the future while trying to push clean energy. I’m certainly not envious of the choices he’ll have to make. Because this is not a problem with an easy solution: how do you ascribe quantitative values to wilderness or to progress? The best environmental stewardship must combine efforts to protect our natural world with efforts to ensure that humanity’s ever-increasing drain on natural resources is met in the most efficient, cost-effective way possible.

There are so many bodies involved: local, state, and federal governments, private business interests, public utilities, residents of the desert (human and otherwise), and the urban dwellers who would benefit most from the potential desert solar power plants. To name a few. As the old saying goes, you can’t please all people all the time. But surely we can figure out a way to please most of the people, this time around–if clean energy advocates and environmentalists really can’t find common cause and work together, what hope is there for the rest of us? We all want a clean, secure energy future and a world with hidden wonders and great natural beauty. We’re still taking the very first steps to figuring out how this can be achieved, and I hope the tenor of the discourse improves soon. We’re not rivals, after all. We’re all on the same team–whether we like it or not.