Hello! The linked article has a lot of truth to it, and I’d like to add a little more context and nuance to that and to a couple of OP’s statements.
I don’t contest that major solar installations can and do destroy protected habitat and archaeological sites. I’m strongly in favor of continuing to incentivize rooftop solar; I’m also strongly in favor of building solar plants on sites that don’t have archaeological or religious significance and which minimally impact threatened species. I think construction should include dust abatement to protect nearby residents and include revegetation of topsoil to significantly reduce airborne dust.
I do want to address the question which the Guardian article leaves unanswered: “But a more fundamental question remains: why build in the desert, when thousands of acres of rooftops in urban areas lie empty across California?”
The short answer: It’s far more effective.
It strongly misrepresents the losses from transmitting power from remote areas to local ones. The total loss in transmission and distribution in the US is around 6%. Of that, only 2%age points are from high-voltage, long-distance transmission while the other ~4%age points are from local low-voltage distribution. Further reading here. A 1000km line may lose ~2.5% of its energy; the last 10 km, double that.
There are also advantages to installing at utility scale in the desert: it’s brighter there – there is more solar energy – and you can capture that energy much more effectively with tracking systems.
(Image: A map of the United States showing Direct Normal Irradiance per unit area. DNI is a measure of incident solar energy. The Desert Southwest is in the top bin of the colormap.)
Tracking PV, or solar panels which rotate around a beam and follow the sun from east to west across the sky, delivers up to about 30% more energy with the same panels than fixed-mount panels, which don’t move. Importantly, they’re even more effective near sunrise and sunset – when fixed solar output drops close to zero. In California, the time right before and after sunset is the peak of energy consumption. Being able to capture additional energy close to sunset doesn’t just mean offsetting energy production from fossil fuels at that moment – it also decreases the amount of surge from natural gas plants which need to operate even when solar can supply more energy than is needed, because those plants need to stay operational to be able to rapidly increase power at night.
All told, a panel used in a utility-scale installation in the Mojave can provide almost double the power of the same panel on a south-facing rooftop, particularly when that energy is most valuable. It displaces much more greenhouse gas emissions there and produces cheaper power.
The other thing that the article leaves MASSIVELY unaddressed: The environmental costs of supplying energy any other way.
The outro positions batteries as the future. To a degree, they are – but there are massive environmental costs associated with lithium production and processing, either by mining or by salt-brine evaporation. Salt-brine production consumes and can contaminate massive quantities of water, particularly in desert areas where the evaporative potential of hot, dry air accelerates lithium concentration. It currently requires harsh chemicals or huge amounts of energy to process, even when mined with more traditional methods. You’ll find articles much like the Guardian’s on solar decrying the devastation wreaked by lithium mining. Almost all lithium production occurs outside the US, but the Mojave Desert holds the US’s main lithium reserves and its only current lithium processing facilities; it’s actively being explored for lithium extraction.
What of other energy generation methods? Nuclear? What of the massive environmental contamination in the Mojave from radioactive waste spillage? The disproportionate impact of radiation waste on Native communities? The biggest radioactive waste spill in US history which still affects the Navajo nation? Or natural gas, or coal – what about the environmental contamination of the Mojave when PG&E dumped over 350 million gallons of contaminated wastewater (a byproduct of natural gas compression for transmission) into the ground near Hinkley, leading to over a thousand people becoming ill and leaving contamination to this day? What about natural gas plants leaking methane, spewing carbon dioxide and byproducts of combustion? And what about the hazards of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles? The disproportionate rates of asthma and lung cancer in areas of LA near the ports and highways, affecting over a million people in the city of LA alone?
Nothing is free. Any means of generating electricity and energy requires resource extraction. Any means of transmitting and storing energy has costs and risks. Everything causes harm – wind, hydro, nuclear, fossil fuels, battery storage, water-battery storage, chemical storage. The question is “how much” and “is it worth it” and “can we reduce that harm in any way.”
I am strongly in favor of reducing harm to the greatest extent possible. That requires acknowledging the harms of any kind of energy and mitigating them wherever possible. To an extent I’m glad that articles like the Guardian’s are circulating, because public pressure to choose less-impactful locations for solar fields and to mitigate the harm to local residents is a good thing. But it does no good to present alternatives as magical, harmless solutions without question.
Last little sidebar – It’s just nowhere close to true that Joshua trees are on their way to extinction, or that solar installations are a major threat to the species.
The Red List/IUCN considers it a species of Least Concern. The NatureServe listing is G3/G4 – at risk to secure. Its main threats are increased fire frequency, drought, and climate change. Habitat loss from many causes – development, grazing, off-road vehicle use, and yes, renewable energy – is tertiary. The species is also currently protected in California. The Riverside East Solar Energy Zone does not overlap with the habitat of the Joshua tree. If you want to advocate for the continued survival of the species, consider supporting the replanting effort in the Mojave National Preserve, after the 2020 Dome Fire killed over a million Joshua trees there (around a quarter of the park’s population).
