California solar energy plant developers asked the Renewable Energy Policy Group this past Friday if environmental approval processes could be sped up, since projects are making little to no progress towards their 2010 construction goals–goals that must be reached if the projects are to qualify for specific federal funds. This frustration with the slow pace of approval has become something of a theme with solar development in the southwest and California. Various bills have been proposed that would (a) speed up the approval processes for solar energy plants or (b) at least provide clearer environmental guidelines for plant development to make it easier to predict the success or failure of a project. Developers don’t see why separate guidelines need to be established–can’t they just use the guidelines in place for other large desert developments? Why is solar so much more complicated?
The fact is, solar is just new. Even though the technology (in some cases) has been around for half a century or longer, we truly don’t yet know what long-term impact solar energy plants will have on the land around them. Of course, we didn’t know this when we built the first coal plants, or the first nuclear power plants, and while one could hope we’ve learned from our trials and errors, perhaps one thing we’ve learned is caution. This is an inopportune time for lawmakers to suddenly get cautious about land use, though, as California in particular struggles to meet its solar capacity goals set by the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) and managed as the California Solar Initiative. By the end of 2010, says the RPS, California should be getting 20 percent of its power from renewable sources, among them solar electric generation and solar thermal plants. It looks like the state will fall short and need to redouble its efforts to ramp up renewable capacity in time to meet its next milestone of 33 percent by 2020.
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