The wind industry was even more frustrated than the solar industry, saying the [Original Obama Administration] plan would prevent development in most of California's best remaining wind hotspots.
Nancy
Rader, executive director of the California Wind Energy Association,
said she was "very pleased" by Thursday's announcement from the Trump
administration. In an email, she said the[Obama Admin] desert plan "flatly prohibited
wind energy projects (though not oil and gas development or cattle
grazing) [and that was the Obama Admin plan? Sneaking in pro-oi/gas under the pretense of protecting-desert/
Chew on THOSE quotes. And while Trump's done lots of pro-oil-drilling steps, people have forgotten the massive amounts Obama did -- Dems hide that fact to not upset their voters; Republcians are happy to cooperate hiding those facts because they don't want to admit the differences between the two parties are way less than both parties pretend and want to pretend D's are super "anti" while Dems want to pretend too -- in fact **fracking** plus *off-shore* and *Gulf* were hugely expanded, as Debbie Lusignan covered on youtube very well -- under Obama.
Similarly I don't give much of care if Trump's *motivations* are "to prove Dem's wrong about what they call me" when his **actions** are the opposite of Clintonite-DNC -- "watch out for Superpredators" policies that expanded Mass Incarceration while Trump has done what Obama couldn't, bipartisan First Step Act PLUS see the link for Second Chance Hiring -- education, college, healthcare, housing etc help for ex-felons, see BOTH links at my page: http://www.lesserevil2020.com/
You'll hear me say it one more time and then LA times: (i)We spend 95% of our activism time on elections and 5% on other, it should be other way around or at least closer to 50%/50%, POTUS, any POTUS has limited power, we need local communitarian groups of mutual help, mutual aid, tool-share, car-share, neighborhood watch, watch over police and liason with them, community owned organic permaculture food gardens and more -- from which protections for voters, local election work, locally electing, county, then state etc and (ii) Given above, unless DNC does a huge U-turn, it'll be true again what was true in 2016: Trump will again in 2020 be the less dangerous candidate -- the one less likely to murder a half million people (as GWB and Obama/Clinton both did in Iraq, Libya, Syria), will have media spotlight on him instead of a Dem Corporate Neocon Warmonger who will get SOFTBALL treatment when *they* screw over vulnerable communities and the environment, while MSM is opposite with Trump, and he does some significant good for solar,wind, HBCUs,First Step, Second Chance, de-escalating etc, alongside damaging policies too; but compare to D's are more warmongering, more pro-CIA, more pro-FBI, more pro-war (Russia,Syria,even attacks steps towards peace with North Korea) and gets softball from(most)MSM on Dem domestic damaging policies.
Okay, LA Times after LAST notice to conservative leaning friends reading this: we can cooperate on Solar/Wind, the market price is LOWER so it's win-win-win jobs-infrastructure plus jobs you can't move overseas, plus local energy control, state's control, decentralized, harder for terrorists to target and INCOME (leasing land to wind turbine farms in some cases) for farmers and better for our kids' lungs, that's a long, LONG list of reasons, regardless of whether you are concerned (should be..) about the explosion of greenhouse gases, just the lung health plus ALL those reasons are enough -- from Lazard investment bank quoted below:
onshore wind and solar power are two of the cheapest sources of new electricity generation in the United States, averaging $28 per megawatt-hour and $36 per megawatt-hour, respectively. Electricity from a new natural gas plant, by comparison, typically costs $44 to $68 per megawatt-hour, according to Lazard.
And:
NV Energy will pay an average of $38.44 per megawatt-hour for the
combined output of the solar panels and batteries at the Gemini project
under a 25-year contract.
That's LOWER price even *with* storage (so you use the storage battery bank when sun is away, and re-charge when sun is bright) and *unlike* gas you have lock in for 25 years for low price, while fossil fuel prices have gone up -- and even under Trump, huge number of coal company bankruptcies -- search for email from me with those keywords. Okay, Jan 1st story:
Federal officials plan to approve a massive solar farm with energy storage in the desert outside Las Vegas, paving the way for a $1-billion project that will provide electricity to Nevada residents served by billionaire Warren Buffett's NV Energy.
At 690 megawatts across 7,100 acres, the facility would generate more power than the largest solar farm currently operating in the United States, a 579-megawatt plant in Southern California. The energy storage component — at least 380 megawatts of four-hour lithium-ion batteries, capable of storing solar power for use after dark — would also be one of the largest facilities of its kind.
The so-called Gemini project will be on federal lands, and thus requires sign-off from the Interior Department. The department's Bureau of Land Management released a final environmental impact statement Monday, in which federal officials indicated they will approve the project after one last round of public comments, likely within 90 days.
President Trump has rejected mainstream climate science [not nearly as much as MSM pretends; I've heard him with my own ears say it's real, but politicians-his-way-out by saying who knows what percent is human or how severe Dems pay lip service to that--than hurt solar and so piddly things for solar in other places and massively drill and FRACK], attempted to roll back dozens of regulations affecting the fossil fuel industry[which ones? You don't bother telling us here, LA Times. Yes Trump's *words* when speaking to audiences who like fossil fuels, sounds like...Obama did not long ago telling TX audience truthfully about the massive drilling he'd approved;something D's and R's don't like to talk about to their bases, but to this TX audience was okay for BO to brag about..] and routinely criticized renewable energy.[...]But Trump's appointees at the Interior Department have shepherded several large renewable energy projects across the finish line.
Gemini could be the third solar farm on public lands approved by federal officials since Trump took office, joining the 80-megawatt Sweetwater project in Wyoming and the 500-megawatt Palen project in California's Riverside County.
The Bureau of Land Management published the final environmental analysis for another large Riverside County solar project, Desert Quartzite, in September, but has not yet issued an official "record of decision."
The Gemini project "would represent a significant increase in renewable energy capacity for Nevada and the West," Tim Smith, the bureau's district manager for southern Nevada, said in a recent news release, when the project's draft environmental analysis was released.
"The BLM actively supports the Department of the Interior's America First Energy Plan, an ‘all of the above' strategy which supports energy development on public lands," Smith said.
The Trump administration has also issued several approvals for the Chokecherry and Sierra Madre wind project, which is being developed in Wyoming by Philip Anschutz, the billionaire owner of Staples Center and the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. If fully built out, it would be the largest wind farm in the country, with 1,000 turbines capable of producing 3,000 megawatts of power.
Falling prices and supportive state policies have continued to drive demand for renewable energy, even with the Trump administration taxing imported solar panels [stop lying by omission LA Times:: they make it sound like that was a purely anti-solar step; nope, it was Tariffs and I remember many months ago reading two opinions, one said it was GOOD and would HELP grow domestic solar-industry, they only cover the other half of the coin, more expensive solar from overseas, not the helping grow local solar which emphasize, this other view wasn't a quote from some Trump admin but from industry members and industry watching business analysts who said those tariffs after some pain would HELP our domestic American made solar -H] and more recently rejecting a proposed extension for clean energy tax credits.
The investment bank Lazard reported in November that onshore wind and solar power are two of the cheapest sources of new electricity generation in the United States, averaging $28 per megawatt-hour and $36 per megawatt-hour, respectively. Electricity from a new natural gas plant, by comparison, typically costs $44 to $68 per megawatt-hour, according to Lazard.
NV Energy will pay an average of $38.44 per megawatt-hour for the combined output of the solar panels and batteries at the Gemini project under a 25-year contract.
The addition of Gemini and two other solar-plus-storage projects "allows us to extend the benefits of renewable energy to times when the sun is not shining," Doug Cannon, NV Energy's president and chief executive, said last month.
"Today's decision brings the environmental and price benefits of low-cost solar energy to our customers," Cannon said in a news release, after the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada approved power purchase contracts for Gemini and the other projects. [...] In Nevada, as in California, lawmakers have approved policies promoting climate-friendly energy.
A bill signed by Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak last year required utilities to get half of their electricity from renewable sources by 2030, and set a goal of 100% zero-carbon electricity by 2050. NV Energy, which is owned by Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy and is the state's largest power provider, estimated that 24% of its electricity came from renewables in 2018.
The Gemini project i[..]expected to be fully operational by Dec. 1, 2023. It will be built along Interstate 15 about 30 miles northeast of Las Vegas, near two large solar farms that are already operating on the other side of the freeway.
Gemini "will demonstrate the ability to couple solar PV technology with battery storage to capture and use Nevada's abundant renewable solar resource to deliver low cost power to NV Energy's customers and keep the lights on long after the sun has set," Quinbrook co-founder David Scaysbrook said in a news release in early December.[...]
Like many large-scale renewable energy projects proposed in the desert southwest, Gemini has faced opposition from conservationists concerned about the effects on natural ecosystems and undeveloped landscapes. Those critics typically support renewable energy but say solar panels on rooftops and parking lots should be prioritized, with large-scale projects limited to degraded lands. Nonprofit groups including Defenders of Wildlife, the National Parks Conservation Assn. and the Sierra Club pointed out in comment letters that the Bureau of Land Management's environmental analysis of the Gemini solar farm estimates the project's construction and operation could result in the deaths of up to 215 adult desert tortoises [versus how many deaths from oil spills, not to mention other aspect of fossil fuels..is this Posturing type "environmentalism"?][...]
The Palen solar project in California faced similar criticisms before it was approved by the Trump administration in 2018. The project from EDF Renewable Energy will be just outside Joshua Tree National Park. CleanPowerSF, the community choice agency that provides electricity to San Francisco, said recently it would buy 100 megawatts of power from Palen.
In California, state and federal officials tried to resolve the conflict between energy development and conservation by crafting the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, which protected millions of acres of public lands while setting aside smaller areas for solar and wind farms. But the Trump administration said in 2018 that it would reopen the Obama-era plan, with a stated goal of paving the way for more renewable energy projects.