Pro-solar group blisters mega projects

Apr 6 - McClatchy-Tribune Regional News - Matt Hildner The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

A coalition of solar power activists have issued a report criticizing the solar development efforts of the federal government as too narrow and environmentally harmful.

"Wrong From the Start," a 29-page report issued Monday by the group Solar Done Right, calls on the Bureau of Land Management to turn away from draft policies that would make hundreds of thousands of acres of agency lands eligible for industrial scale plants.

"When considering the big picture of renewable energy development, technology and market trends, we believe that the discretionary targeting of intact public lands for industrial solar development is a grave mistake in need of reversal," the report stated.

The bureau currently is working with the U.S. Department of Energy on an environmental impact statement that would guide solar development in six states, including 120,000 acres in the San Luis Valley. An estimated 20,000 acres in the SLV would be earmarked as especially suited for development.

Solar Done Right includes the San Luis Valley Renewable Communities Alliance and public lands activists, biologists and electrical and solar power engineers from across the Southwest.

The report calls on federal agencies to include consideration of smaller projects -- known as distributed solar generation -- in its analysis.

Plants using the larger-scale technologies commonly produce hundreds of megawatts of electricity while taking up thousands of acres.

Distributed generation calls for the use of photovoltaic solar arrays on the rooftops of homes and businesses, over parking lots, on already-disturbed lands and near transmission substations.

The practice would eliminate the need for new transmission lines, which, along with the falling costs of photovoltaic panels, would provide ratepayers with a cheaper alternative from large, isolated plants.

Solar Done Right argues that it could also be done more quickly, noting that 17,000 megawatts of photovoltaic solar were developed across the world by 2009, whereas only 664 megawatts of concentrated solar power technologies were in use by that date.

Although following such a model would mean placing solar arrays away from public lands, the report notes that National Environmental Policy Act guidelines require an agency to consider alternatives outside its jurisdiction if such a proposal is reasonable.

David Quick, a spokesman for the BLM in Washington, D.C., said agency regulators chose not to include distributed generation as an option because it falls outside of BLM's jurisdiction. "They decided not to spin their wheels on something they didn't have authority about," he said.

The report did not address potential impacts from development in the San Luis Valley.

Ceal Smith, director of the San Luis Valley Renewable Communities Alliance, said she is concerned by the damage that would come from clearing thousands of open land for one large plant.

"I think the air quality would be a significant concern here," she said.

The draft environmental impact statement issued by the BLM in December noted that the re-establishment of grass and shrubs on some of the valley's proposed parcels would be difficult.