The Egyptians had their pyramids and we’ll have our solar panels and windmills, giant piles of useless garbage cluttering up the landscape in the best Ozymandian arrogance after having burned up a lot of cash.
Back in the day, Obama Inc. bragged that “loan guarantees are helping Solyndra in Fremont, California, build a high-tech, solar panel manufacturing facility with the capacity to build 230 MW a year. The Department of Energy also has issued conditional commitments for BrightSource Energy to build a 377 MW solar power plant in Ivanpah, California. Together, Solyndra and BrightSource estimate that these projects will lead to over 4,000 construction jobs and over 1,000 ongoing manufacturing and operations jobs.”
Solyndra filed for a gigantic $570 million bankruptcy, now the Ivanpah mess is finally being closed down.
The $2.2 billion plant that was supposed to be the largest of its kind was going to gift us solar power for a generation. Obama’s Interior Secretary Ken Salazar described it among the projects that were “milestones in our energy future. They show what great strides we are making through innovation and technology. And they reflect President Obama’s focus and commitment to standing up America’s renewable energy economy. The Department of the Interior is resolute and determined to secure a safer, more sustainable energy future for our nation.”
The solar retrofuture however is already past tense. The owners and energy companies drawing ‘clean energy’ from Ivanpah have agreed to shut it down. The plant was supposed to run for 25 years, but it’s being shut down 13 years ahead of schedule.
The green future is done. But not until the taxpayers got socked well and good.
When fully operational, it was supposed to generate about 1 million megawatt-hours of power annually; for 2015–2023, actual annual output has averaged 702,322 MWh.
This poor performance has obtained despite a $1.6 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy, for which the plant owners did not have to pay even the usual credit subsidy cost (the expected default liability for the federal government), under the DoE section 1705 loan program. The plant owners then applied for and received a grant of $535 million from the Treasury Department under the section 1603 program to pay back part of the loan already guaranteed at no charge by the DoE. There also was the 30 percent investment tax credit, the accelerated depreciation (an assumed plant life of five years), and a depreciation bonus of 50 percent in the first year. And there is the guaranteed market share for wind and solar power—the “renewable portfolio standard”—which meant that the major California utilities were forced to buy the power produced by Ivanpah. (Pacific Gas & Electric buys the power from towers 1 and 3, while Southern California Edison buys the power from tower 2.)
Closing down this gargantuan green monstrosity will save the lives of thousands of birds and other animals.
Environmental groups claim the plant’s intense solar reflections have caused numerous bird deaths, with around 6,000 being incinerated mid-air every year. Additionally, concerns have been raised about its impact on the habitat of the threatened desert tortoise.
“Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project’s construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species,” Julia Dowell, a senior campaign organizer at the Sierra Club, an environmental organization, said. “The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster.”
Go Green, go broke.