Solar Energy Developers Find Themselves in Green Versus Green Debate Over Coyote Land

Coyote land or parking space for solar energy? Ask the coyotes first solar energy companies are finding out.

Solar energy project promoters may not be paying attention to the ecological impacts of installing large solar panel installations in non-settled desert areas. This issue was brought up recently following the revealing of plans for companies like the American-Israeli BrightSource Energy, who we reported as being chosen by California’s giant utility company, Pacific Gas & Electric to build solar energy installations in certain remote California desert areas.

It is now apparent that these locations, such as the vast Mojave Desert are not as “remote” as people might think, and actually possess an ecological uniqueness and beauty all their own – enough to make conservation, ecological and other green organizations ready to fight the vary renewable energy systems that are being brought there to produce clean energy to retard global warming.

These problems were covered already on Green Prophet (Solar Projects Expanding on Coyote Land), and now on Yale University’s environmental news site, Environment 360. The magazine charges that solar energy companies like BrightSource are planning to build “dozens of multi-billion dollar solar power plants in the Mojave Desert to provide electric power for millions of homes.”

The downside of this idea, however is how these plants, which require large tracts of land for solar panel arrays, will affect the delicate desert eco-balance which supports despite being arid is home for a wide variety of desert plants and animals.

BrightSource, which recently staged a demonstration of its solar energy technology at a test plant facility in Israel’s Negev Dessert has already been frustrated in building solar energy plants in desert areas of California regions of neighboring Nevada.