Arduous day of job huntage here, but I wanted to share a couple things of a non-April Fool nature.
A couple weeks back climate activist Joseph Romm posted a screed on his blog Climate Progress against those shortsighted people who would blithely defend the desert against massive, slightly green-tinged industrial developments. Romm’s done some exemplary work pointing out the likely effects of climate change, and his book The Hype About Hydrogen: Fact And Fiction In The Race To Save The Climate
Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) appears to like deserts so much that she wants them to stretch from Oklahoma to California and cover one third the planet.
The AP reported Friday, “Feinstein seeks [to] block solar power from desert land“:
“Nineteen companies have submitted applications to build solar or wind facilities on a parcel of 500,000 [Mojave] desert acres, but Sen. Dianne Feinstein said Friday such development would violate the spirit of what conservationists had intended when they donated much of the land to the public.
“Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would turn the land into a national monument, which would allow for existing uses to continue while preventing future development.”
I am sympathetic to “conservationists,” but mostly to those who are trying to conserve what matters most, a livable climate.
And:
Deserts are certainly fragile, inhospitable eco-systems — a key reason that nobody should want them spreading over one third the planet or the entire U.S. Southwest for 1,000 years.
Some people may see progressive sentiment there. I see a guy sitting in a comfortable chair in Washington DC making pronouncements about how the desert has to sacrifice so that some grand plans can be carried out. Scratch a DC “serious environmental policy player,” get Floyd Dominy.
Larry Hogue let me know about the post so I could post a comment that made his look reasonable, and he then held forth a bit at Desert Blog. Have a read.
In that post Larry talks about a Google Map to which he gave me editing access, and I highlighted a few areas in the Mojave that might theoretically actually be amenable to concentrating solar development. These are areas that have already had the desert flora and most of the fauna removed, have been graded and deprived of any ecological value, areas in which a massive industrial solar development might actually constitute an environmental improvement.
They are alfalfa farms. The Mojave Desert is a leading US producer of alfalfa. Alfalfa is a low-value crop — grossing maybe a couple thou an acre in a good year — that needs abundant water. Mojave Desert alfalfa farmers irrigate either with water from the California Aqueduct, which could be used more efficiently elsewhere or left in the rivers for struggling salmon, or they pump groundwater, which is fast being depleted. Either irrigation method adds to the carbon burden because of pumping.
Here’s a spot The Raven and I drove past last weekend:
That’s just east of the Palmdale Airport. Each of those big circles is an alfalfa field, watered via center-pivot irrigation, each occupying much of a quarter-section — a quarter square mile, or 160 acres. Larry points out that eSolar offers a concentrating solar technology that could be deployed on a site that size, with output in the 46 megawatt peak load range.
I see 23 quarter-sections of almost completely disturbed land there, all adjacent. 23 times 46 megawatts is a little over a terawatt of generating capacity. That would power 2/3 of the homes in San Bernardino County at their 2007 electricity consumption rates, more if conservation measures were instituted. The land is close to a city with good housing, meaning that workers wouldn’t offset most of the carbon savings of the plant by commuting several hundred miles to work each week, and that less of the power would be lost in transmission to end users.
The Mojave ranks second only to Wisconsin in US alfalfa production, an artifact of unnaturally cheap energy and water. An ecologically sane society would stop desert alfalfa farming altogether as a waste of both water and energy on a crop that can be grown without irrigation in the humid east. Repurposing those environmentally destructive desert alfalfa farms to produce solar electric power.
You might tool around the desert with Google Maps and see how many of those center-pivot irrigation fields you can find. Helendale, CA has one, and 46 megawatts generated there would generate three times the power consumption of the whole town. Talk about a source of municipal income.
And if you have Google Earth installed on your machine, you can download a dataset from NRDC that shows protected areas in the desert, from National Parks and Preserves to BLM wildernesses: places that deserve better than to be paved with mirrors because policy analysts in DC decide getting people to spend forty bucks on an LED light bulb is too big a sacrifice.
I’ve been thinking recently that Westlands Water District would be a good place for those solar arrays. The natural environment is long since disturbed. The farming environment is saltifying and destined for retirement. I can’t believe the solar intensity is that much less than the full desert. They’re fallowing three hundred thousand acres this year and fallowing the total six hundred thousand acres would ease a little of the strain on our water systems. All I would need to know is that Westlands WD is close to the grid or a way to tie into the grid, and this would be my policy preference.
By the way, you’ve touched on one of my hobby horses. Alfalfa has some nice properties (drought resistence because of the long taproot, for one) and in California is actually a fairly valuable crop (because of the nearby dairies and CAFO’s). I personally don’t care if most of it goes away, but that will also be the end of having cheap meat in California. I don’t care if that goes away either (I don’t eat meat), but it is a substantial change in how most people live. I’m never sure that all the people who advocate getting rid of alfalfa in the desert!!! really mean the follow through consequence. I agree with them if they do, but it seems more likely that they don’t know what they’re arguing for.
Even better, abandoned alfalfa farms. There are lots in the West Mojave between, like, Mojave and Ridgecrest.
Great post, Chris!
So it looks like a couple of different environmental issues, and at least one nutritition issue, are merging here. Nothing better than three birds (cows?) with one stone.