And when all seemed set for the big solar energy plant to be built, a conservationist group is filing suit against the Federal government in an effort to stop construction — a last-ditch effort from what has proven to be a resilient opposition movement.

The Western Watersheds Project (WWP) — a non-profit organization that describes its mission as, “to protect and restore western watersheds and wildlife through education, public policy initiatives and litigation” — is alleging that the federal government approved the plant without conducting adequate environmental reviews. Specifically, in asking the court to withdraw the approval of the plant, WWP claims the government did not analyze the impact on migratory birds, the desert tortoise, desert bighorn sheep, groundwater resources and the desert’s various rare plants.

Lawsuits like these are pretty common when it comes to large projects being built — particularly on undeveloped land, like the Mojave. Some observers may be surprised by the WPP lawsuit, however, given all steps taken by the project’s developer, BrightSource Energy, to ensure its plans addressed local concerns. BrightSource’s original plan included using dry cooling technology to save water. But In February 2010 the developer was still catching heat for its water use.

And this time, conservationists remain concerned over land use issues and potential damage to the desert tortoise’s habitat. BrightSource responded by making the following changes:

• 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

WWP members nevertheless remain unconvinced — hence the lawsuit. Even if they fail to derail the project, it’s likely not the last we’ve seen of WWP’s clean energy opposition. The group has offices in five of the six states that were recently identified in the federal government’s Draft Solar Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement of December 2010 — a roadmap of sorts detailing the most promising opportunities to develop clean energy projects in the southwest.

So, as crazy as it sounds, a conservationist group’s efforts will likely be the biggest obstacle facing solar energy expansion in the western United States.

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If eventually completed, the 150-megawatt (MW) plant should be able to pump out 450,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of solar energy each year. That’s enough power to fully account for 100,000 average American homes annually. It would also bring in over $100,000 in additional tax revenue during its first decade of operation.

Moreover, and perhaps more important, the plant will be a major jobs creator for Arizona. For example, during construction of the power plant — which the Sun Herald estimates will last two years once the actual ground work begins — about 450 state construction workers will be employed. Once the plant’s construction is completed, it will need at minimum 45 full-time workers to operate it.

Solar Reserve’s next step is to receive final permission from the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) to build the plant. The company is hopeful to have the project OK’d sometime in early 2011. Notably, the project will take two years to fully complete because additional transmission lines will also have to be built so that the clean energy can be fed to Arizona utilities.

Crossroads would be unlike any other solar thermal power plant because it will utilize SolarReserve’s own patented technology. A solar power tower will be positioned in the middle of a field of concentrated solar lenses that direct the sunlight onto a receiver at the top of the centered tower. The receiver contains molten salt that uses the sun’s heat to warm up to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Finally, the heat flows into a storage tank where it maintains, according to SolarReserve, a 98 percent efficiency rate.

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On October 26th, U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar approved the $6 billion Blythe Solar Project to be built across more than 7,000 acres in California’s desert. Around the same time, approval came through for the Ivanpah Solar Project, which will produce enough energy to power the equivalent of 140,000 average American homes each year.

The latest approval came yesterday for the 250-megawatt (MW) Genesis Solar Energy Project, which will be built on desert land in southeastern California — a mere 25 miles of the Blythe solar project site. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and California Energy Commission approved the project in September, leaving Federal approval as the final barrier standing in the way of construction. Now that the barrier has been broken, the project is expected to be completed in late 2012 or early in the 2013 calendar year.

Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources is developing the project and expects it to create 1,100 new jobs and power as many as 188,000 average American homes each year. Thirty percent of the $300 million tab to construct the project will come from federal stimulus funds. Genesis will be built on public land.

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Like many other plants being built on California desert land, the Calico Plant has raised questions its potential impact on wildlife in the area. This time, environmentalists are worried about the bighorn sheep that live in the mountains just above the 4,600 acres on which the plant will be built.

But in the end, the powers that be decided the benefits of the plant outweigh the negatives. According to the U.S. Department of Interior, the Calico Plant will cost over $2 billion to build and will be able to power anywhere from 200,000 to 500,000 homes every year when it’s fully functional in the late 2011 calendar year. Calico is one of four plants that the CEC and Department of Interior have recently approved. The others are being developed by Abengoa, NextEra Energy and Solar Millennium.

The Calico plant will use the SunCatcher — a type of solar thermal technology that uses mirrored dishes to turn sunlight into electricity. Since the plant will rest on public land, Tessera also needed to gain approval from federal officials. That approval came on October 20th. Including this latest plant, exactly 3,492.5 MW of solar capacity have been approved for construction in the California desert.

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According to CBS 3 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the plant will go live at the end of the 2010 calendar year. At 1.8 megawatts (MW) of solar generating capacity, the plant will serve 300 homes in the service area of the Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO).

It was built on marginal land at an abandoned brownfield. Area workers, along with local contractors in western Massachusetts, built the entire plant over the course of four months. Here’s Massachusetts Senator and Pittsfield native Benjamin Downing’s statement from the newly constructed solar site:

“We’re standing on a site that was dumped on with PCBs for the last quarter century and for the next quarter century it’s going to produce clean local renewable energy. That’s exactly the kind of thing we ought to be doing.”

Aside from the benefits associated with clean, predictably priced power, Pittsfield will receive an additional $150,000 in tax revenue each year.

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It was completed last month by Enbridge Energy, an energy provider to over 6,000 people in North America, using solar modules from First Solar, the Tempe, Arizona-based thin-film solar manufacturer.

Through a 20-year power purchasing agreement (PPA), Enbridge will sell the power to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) under the agreed terms of Ontario’s Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program, a feed-in tariff that was enacted to help Ontario meet its fast approaching renewable energy targets.

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SunEdison’s latest project — a 1-megawatt (MW) solar plant in Pima County in southern Arizona — was activated on Monday. The solar photovoltaic (PV) facility is expected to generate over two million kWh of solar power each year. SOLON Corporation — which has offices in Tucson — has been contracted to operate the system, and its panels will be used at the plant to generate energy.

SunEdison will own the system and offer the power to Pima County at no up-front cost of installation. Now that the project is up and running, Pima County will purchase the generated energy through a 20-year service agreement with SunEdison. Throughout the lifetime of the agreement, Pima County is expected to save anywhere from $1.2 million to $2 million in energy costs.

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The company uses a form of concentrated solar power (CSP), where mirrors focus reflected light on water-filled tubes. The water boils, producing steam; the steam turns a traditional steam turbine. When you have a lot of land and a lot of sun–say, in the middle of Nevada, where Ausra built a factory–this can be an excellent, efficient use of solar energy.

After both manufacturing the equipment and developing projects, Ausra decided to focus just on equipment earlier this year in an attempt to find its footing in the weak market. Whether it will return to dual-track mode once bought or if it will stay a manufacturer only remains to be seen.

When Ausra has a firm deal in hand, no doubt it will make a bigger splash in the solar news world; for now, this is insider gossip only.

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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.

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