Posted on 04/17/2014 5:00:27 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmentalists. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement with the environmental groups to add thousands of acres near their projects for wildlife protection.
As more solar farms arise in the sunny corners of the U.S., it’s inevitable that solar developers will have to play ball with environmental groups. First Solar and SunPower announced an agreement on Tuesday with the Sierra Club and others to add thousands of acres near their proposed projects for wildlife protection.
The agreement calls for the two companies to add 9,000 acres to the 17,000 acres they had already planned to set aside for wildlife protection in the Carrizo Plain of San Luis Obispo County, California, where First Solar plans to build the 550 MW Topaz Solar Farm and SunPower will construct the 250 MW California Valley Solar Ranch. The companies will buy the 9,000 acres and use conservation easements to protect them from development in perpetuity, said Ingrid Ekstrom, a spokeswoman for SunPower, which expects to complete the land purchase within 12 months after the completion of the solar project in 2013, she added. The timeline for the land purchase will be similar for First Solar, said First Solar spokesman Alan Bernheimer.
The two companies also promise to both remove 30 miles of fences to make it easier for wildlife to travel through the protected area and to avoid using chemicals designed to kill rodents since the region is home to the endangered San Joaquin kit fox and giant kangaroo rats.
In addition, First Solar and SunPower will contribute money to help the county buy undeveloped land...
(Excerpt) Read more at gigaom.com ...
And where do they find all this undeloped land to be used for nothing but set aside in high priced California? Hey, how about shutting down the water and bankrupting a bunch of farmers. Presto. Immediate market for useless wasteland at firesale prices.
Just wondering...
Why does First Solar sound familiar?
Oh, yeah. The BLM/Bundy incident in Nevada: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3144484/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/firstsolar/index
Harry (Hairy) Reid (Reed) is their point man.
Here in Michigan what we’re getting are “Buffer management zones” which extend out from national park boundaries and often include huge swathes of state lands.
State law allows limited drilling, logging etc on state lands but I’m guessing its not allowed in these new buffer zones.
From a post on another thread:
To: Jim Robinson
maybe there’s a clue here somewhere. Farmers, ranchers, miners, etc, who are near infrastructure, can be pushed off their land easier than trying to locate into an area with litle infrastructure. Water is an important element to this:
https://www.acgov.org/cda/planning/landuseprojects/documents/Distributed_vs_Utility_Scale.pdf
“Physically possible to construct in urbanized settings, but the difficulty of coordination of many landowners and the probably substantial costs of permitting in urban zones would be prohibitive at present.”
“Finally, the presence of water rights for agriculture and the potential loss of those rights in the event of onsite agricultural dormancy could be an obstacle to eventual ag restoration and thus to permitting of the solar facility. Various other ordinances and policies on biological, cultural and visual resources are important, along
with water conservation policies if the proposed installation is a thermal installation (which require large amounts of water, unlike PV installations).”
... received a $1.2 billion federal loan guarantee from a program that drew controversy for its $535 million loan guarantee to help Solyndra build a solar panel factory.
NRG Energy NRG -1.35% bought the project from SunPower in 2011... NRG is co-owner of... the Ivanpah project ...being brought online by BrightSource Energy.
Ivanpah also has benefited from the same federal loan guarantee program. The program’s two other completed solar power projects are the 280-megawatt Solana by Abengoa Solar in Arizona and the 150-megawatt Mesquite Solar project in Arizona by Sempra Generation.
83 posted on 4/17/2014 4:21:48 PM by blueplum
Of course, they'll do both if they can, which appears to be the case here.
But the wind turbines are killing eagles and other birds, with the regime's blessing.
It isn’t useless wasteland. Millions of Americans lives have been tremendously enriched just knowing that out there somewhere are free range tortoises.
BrightSource Energy is another corrupt Harry Reid deal:
Reid fundraises at offices of solar energy company
Nancy Watzman August 31, 2010, 11:19 a.m.
http://politicalpartytime.org/blog/2010/08/31/reid-fundraises-at-offices-of-solar-energy-company/
Excerpt:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D., Nev., is scheduled to be in California fundraising this Thursday at the Oakland offices of BrightSource Energy — a solar energy firm that earlier this year secured $1.37 billion in conditional federal loan guarantees to build a massive solar energy complex in Ivanpah, near the California-Nevada border, a project applauded by the Senator.
Hosting the breakfast event are Brightsource Energy’s CEO, John Woolard, and the chairman of PG&E Corporation, Peter Darbee. PG&E will be a major consumer of the electricity generated by the new project, with the first plant expected to go on-line in 2012. Woolard and other company executives have given a total of $6,000 to Sen. Reid since 2009 and PG&E’s PAC has given $2,000.
When the U.S. Department of Energy announced the federal loan guarantees in February, Reid lauded the project, saying, “I look forward to BrightSource and other solar companies putting more Nevadans to work by building major projects like this in Nevada very soon.”
And at the August 2009 Energy Summit 2.0 Roundtable Discussion led by Reid and the Center for American Progress Action Fund, Woolard praised the Senator, saying that on the subject of solar energy he had “done a very good job of listening and understanding what some of these challenges are,” and then went on to describe the Ivanpah project as a jobs creator primarily for people from Clark County, Nevada.
The 400 megawatt solar complex, which when complete will be the world’s largest solar energy project, according to the company, will use mirrors to capture the sun’s power on 3,600 acres of federal land managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM). In addition to the loan guarantees, the project is considered a “fast track” priority for receiving federal stimulus dollars under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). BrightSource Energy is also receiving funding from Google.org and BP Alternative Energy among other groups...
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/brightsource/index?tab=articles
Follow the money.
Yes, I know. I erred when I forgot the quote marks: “Wasteland.”
Many years ago a couple of people I know found a spot loaded with “oakley stone” which is a layered quartzite formation of some really nice flagstone. They made applications to the blm to mine it. Denied denied denied. They found out later the blm guy gave the rights to a buddy.
I can’t begin to tell you how many tons of rock we have hauled out of there over the last four decades. Eff the blm.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
BREAKING: NRG Energy on the DOE Cronyism Hot Seat, Also Tied to George Soros
I have been “following the green-energy money” (close to $100 billion dollars) since the passing of the 2009 stimulus package...And, early this morning –– a subscriber of The Washington Free Beacon, one of the few that has their eye on Green Cronyism –– I found this headline, Bundler of Sunshine: Obama Bundler’s Husband Has Received More Than a Billion in DOE Solar Loans.
Yep, NRG snagged two major DOE loans that by the way, were on the “Junk bond” portfolio that I had written about last month –– NRG with two green projects:
NRG Solar, LLC (Agua Caliente) –– Rating BB+ by Fitch; Aug 2011 for $967 million
NRG Energy (California Valley Solar Ranch) –– Rating BB+ by Fitch; Sept 2011 over $1.2 billion
NOTES on the Agua Caliente Project:
DOE announced a $967 million loan guarantee to NRG in August 2011 for its $1.8 billion Agua Caliente Solar Project.
NRG acquired the Agua Caliente Solar Project from First Solar on August 5, 2011, as DOE announced the loan. First Solar is a Goldman Sachs investment, and Goldman Sachs –– #2 top Obama 2008 donor with two Bundlers and other donors –– has their DNA all over “green!”
Buffett’s MidAmerican Energy bought a 49 percent stake in NRG’s Agua Caliente project in December 2011.
Electricity from Agua Caliente will be sold under a 25-year power purchase agreement with Pacific Gas and Electric Co. (another Big Energy firm making BANK off of green energy, including government subsidies that just so happens to be politically connected to the president and the Democrat party), helping California to meet its ambitious renewable energy goals. Also, PG&E’s whose former employee, Cathy Zoi –– a former was a DOE Official rife with “green conflicts of interest” –– until she left the Obama administration in February 2011 to join Silver Lake Kraftwerk, a private equity fund financed by the controversial left-wing billionaire George Soros!
I don’t understand it all but if a lot of corrupt money is involved, Soros is involved.
Why is he still breathing?
Yup. And Obama/Reid, et al:
Underneath Senator Harry Reid’s Clean-Energy Dirt: Career politician directly linked to over $3 billion in green energy stimulus loans
http://greencorruption.blogspot.com/2013/11/underneath-senator-harry-reids-clean.html#.U1BxPfldWL4
Excerpts:
Two months ago, on the Senate floor, the Majority Leader Harry Reid rambled on suggesting that instead of considering “the latest Republican aim to derail the successful implementation of Obamacare,” the Senate should be addressing things like energy efficiency and “facing the reality of climate change.” This was later posted by the left-wing propaganda machine, Think Progress, which is a blog run by Center for American Progress –– the high-powered organization that has a major foothold inside the Obama administration, and is a driving force inside this clean-energy scheme, which of course, includes pushing a “radical climate agenda.”
Considering that the Affordable Care Act has since turned into a calamity, the Obama administration is now grasping for climate change legacy as his second-term agenda crumbles. However, behind the scenes, and before recent unfavorable events, it was reported that “he [Obama] sees this [climate change] as a necessary part of his legacy.”
This means that while the president released his “Climate Action Plan” in June 2013, the push to spend billions more of taxpayer money in order to save the planet will continue to spew out of the White House, coupled with various executive actions, extreme measures, and further expansion of our federal government’s control over our lives. What most Americans don’t know is that a March 2012 report by the Brookings Institute, places the Obama administrations’ “total government spending (both stimulus and non-stimulus) on green initiatives at $150 billion through 2014.” And what did we, the taxpayer, get out of the deal? Billions wasted, increased debt, outsourcing green energy money and green jobs to other countries, as well as massive amounts of corporate welfare, cronyism, and corruption.
Even so, as the congressional Democrats and their allies resume plotting, the senator from Nevada has more sinister motives: the “green” gave Reid a 2010 platform and facilitated a guaranteed reelection. Who knows what the future holds for Reid if the Obama administration and his “climate minions” continue to have their way.
Senator Reid: Repeat Offender on “List of Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians”
Harry Reid is another one of those career politicians making their living off the backs of American taxpayers. Reid, who came from humble beginnings, has “risen from the son of a hard-rock miner to a fabulously wealthy Senate Majority Leader” (net worth in 2010 ranged from $3,302,053 to $10,309,999). First elected in 1986, Reid knows how to use the system, inside and out, in order to get elected over and over.
Reid is even a “repeat offender” at the Judicial Watch “List of Washington’s Ten Most Wanted Corrupt Politicians.” While Judicial Watch, in 2012, gives examples on how the majority leader has used earmarks and influence to enrich himself and his family, they do reference his tie to solar. “Sen. Harry Reid’s latest influence-peddling scandal involves ENN Energy Group,” a Chinese green energy client of Nevada’s largest and most prestigious law firm –– Lionel Sawyer & Collins, of which the Senator’s son, Rory Reid, is a principal.
Back in the summer of 2012, news broke on how Harry and his oldest son, Rory, were both involved in “an effort by a Chinese energy giant, ENN Energy Group, to build a $5 billion solar farm and panel manufacturing plant in the southern Nevada desert.” Needless to say, Reid’s connection to green energy goes much deeper than one Chinese firm.
In getting underneath the majority leader’s clean-energy dirt, one must know that sometime in either late 2008 or early 2009, the senator was first instrumental in getting the “Recovery Act” to appropriate and expand the Energy Department’s Loan Guarantee Program, which ultimately added stimulus loans to its repertoire. Then prior to, at the same time, or shortly thereafter, Reid received money from the geothermal industry, as well as those seeking stimulus loans. Reid, then, in September 2009, pressured President Obama, the Secretary’s of Treasury and Energy as well as the Director of the Office of Management and Budget to fund clean-energy projects “rapidly” –– all under the guise of “investments” and based on the false promise of job creation.
What we will be exposing in this Green Corruption File is that instead of creating jobs, there is a case whereas Reid’s advocacy actually “bailed out” his cronies. Meanwhile, the White House and those inside the DOE helped Reid secure clean-energy stimulus loans (and grants) for projects in Nevada that had “his support” –– all the while Reid used these wins as a campaign ploy to ensure a 2010 midterm victory, of which we can confirm that the senator is directly linked to over $3 billion in just the stimulus loans alone –– taxpayer money that created a whopping 224 permanent jobs.
Senator Reid’s Role in the Recovery Act Stimulus Loans
In June 2013, we reported that Senator Harry Reid had a small role (hypocrisy) in our “Nuclear Crimes and Misdemeanors” story, which involves the billion-dollar Colorado-based consulting, engineering and construction firm CH2M Hill, who has been on the government dole for quite some time, and not only had input into the 2009-Recovery Act, but in 2009, was awarded $1.3 billion in stimulus funds. Apparently, it was appropriate to scrutinize the “conflict of interest” when President Bush was in office, but not a peep from Reid under President Obama. CH2M Hill may be just a fluke, but what we can confirm is that Majority Leader Reid is heavily involved in this green energy scheme.
~~~snip~~~~
Three Key Players Inside the Ivanpah project: PG&E, Google, & NRG Energy
Besides all energy expended on getting the BrightSource $1.6 billion loan approved, plus the key participants listed above, many of which were friends of President Obama, we must throw in the fact that BrightSource has an array of investors that are high-powered Obama donors such as VantagePoint Capital, Google, BP Alternative Energy, Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs ––with BrightSource having partnered with NRG Energy and Google on their Ivanpah project, though, according to Forbes, “the federal loan guarantee is financing the bulk of Invanpah’s construction costs.”
VantagePoint, which I outlined earlier, noting many direct connections to the president, and that as of September 2013, VantagePoint’s investment portfolio has at least nine clean-energy firms/projects, which includes three DOE loans that received loans, grants, and special tax breaks, and places their total at about $3 billion of taxpayer money.
While each of the listed investors deserve further scrutiny, we’ll stay with three that are directly part of the Ivanpah project located on federally-owned land in the Mojave Desert in southeastern California, near the Nevada border.
The BrightSource strategy not involved their gang, which ranged from the CEO John Woolard, its chairman John Bryson, and their lobbyists McBee Strategic Consulting. But in the mix was their vice president connection Bernie Toon; VantagePoint ties to the president; key DOE insiders and high-profiled Democrats such as Senator Harry Reid working on their behalf, as well as other key figures in the mix, which included the former chairman of PG&E, Peter Darbee, who was also working on their behalf due to the fact that PG&E had an invested interest in the Ivanpah project.
Still, PG&E is a strong Obama and Democrat donor. In fact, PG&E is jam-packed with Washington “green cronies,” including Cathy Zoi, who is the “most controversial former PG&E employee to hold an influential government position.” Zoi, an Al Gore acolyte, in April 2009, became the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency, who oversaw the disbursement of more than $30 billion in renewable energy stimulus funds in her DOE position at the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE). Later in 2010, during a series of DOE vacancies, Zoi briefly filled the role of Acting Undersecretary for Energy, and in February 2011, she jumped the DOE ship to work for George Soros –– another friend of Obama and key villain in this Green Corruption scandal, and also a shareholder of NRG Energy. Meanwhile, Zoi is also tied to a few other green energy companies that got stimulus funds.
Additionally, with their high-powered connections all the way up to the president and inside the DOE, PG&E won a significant amount of stimulus money...
Obama/Reid/Pelosi/Boxer/Feinstein, et al are running one hell of a racket. I saw a post where a judge in the Hage (sp?) case recommended the DOJ go after some of these guys on RICO charges. Guess we won’t hear anything about that from Holder, the Obama mob’s lawyer and consigliere.
Oh, here it is: http://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/15602-federal-judge-rules-for-property-rights-smacks-down-abusive-feds
Every time the Sierra Club goes along with one of these plans, they receive a big check.
How is Reid not behind bars?
How can doing the right thing by following the rule of law create a personal hardship?
Hmmm...there goes that new free Lexus...
Enjoining lawsuits is where the envirogroups make their big money. By suing under the Equal Access to Justice Act, they’re entitled to attorney fees and costs whether they win or no.
You gotta be kiddin’ me. Un-freepin-believable.
Looks like well over $6000. This is just 2009.
WOOLARD, JOHN BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./CEO OAKLAND CA 94612 08/20/2009 $1,000
WOOLARD, JOHN BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./CEO OAKLAND CA 94612 07/29/2009 $1,000
DOYLE, THOMAS BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT ORINDA CA 94563 08/26/2009 $2,000
BARLEV, JOSHUA BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./VICE PRESIDENT BERKELEY CA 94705 09/01/2010 $2,400
BAR-LEV, JOSHUA BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./VICE PRESIDENT BERKELEY CA 94705 03/08/2010 $500
BAR-LEV, JOSHUA BRIGHT SOURCE ENERGY, INC./VICE PRESIDENT BERKELEY CA 94705 03/08/2010 $500
LUCAS, PEGGY BRIGHTON DEVELOPMENT/HOUSING DEVELOPMENT MINNEAPOLIS MN 55409 04/21/2010 $500
WOOLARD, JOHN BRIGHTSOURCE ENERGY, INC./CEO OAKLAND CA 94610 09/03/2010 $2,400
BAR-LEV, JOSHUA BRIGHTSOURCE ENERGY, INC./VICE PRESIDENT BERKELEY CA 94705 08/20/2009 $1,000
MULLIGAN, JOHN BRIGHTSOURCE ENERGY/DIRECTOR BETHESDA MD 20816 09/02/2010 $500
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