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Infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci has addressed attacks made on his career and reputation by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who last month released the book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.” Speaking to Yahoo News, the director of the NIAID said, “it really is a shame that he is attacking me in my career,” when asked about RFK’s book not being “a flattering portrait of” his career. “I think if you look at my career there are not a lot of people that would be attacking my career,...

As every ten-year-old who ever got a sweater for a birthday present has been told, “It’s the thought that counts.” That seems to be the guiding principle at the Department of Energy and the California Public Utilities Commission when it comes to solar power. The latest example is the $2.2 billion Ivanpah solar thermal plant in California. (Note: Solar thermal plants do not use solar panels to directly convert sunshine to electricity, they use sunshine to boil water that then drives conventional turbines.) Here’s the story so far, Ivanpah: Is owned by Google, NRG Energy, and Brightsource, who have a...

Death estimates range from 1,000 to 28,000 per year The $2.2 billion plant, which launched in February, is at Ivanpah Dry Lake near the California-Nevada border. Unlike many other solar plants, the Ivanpah plant does not generate energy using photovoltaic solar panels. Instead, it has more than 300,000 mirrors, each the size of a garage door. Together, they cover 1,416 hectares. Each mirror collects and reflects solar rays, focusing and concentrating solar energy from their entire surfaces upward onto three boiler towers, each looming up to 40 stories high. The solar energy heats the water inside the towers to produce...

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...

A stretch of the Mojave Desert has been transformed by hundreds of thousands of mirrors into the largest solar power plant of its type in the world, but the milestone is being met with criticism from environmental groups concerned about the effect of solar energy on desert wildlife. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border, formally opened Thursday after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating tortoises to assessing the impact on plants. The $2.2 billion complex of three generating units, owned by NRG Energy Inc.,...

At California's Ivanpah Plant, Mirrors Produce Heat and Electricity—And Kill Wildlife A giant solar-power project officially opening this week in the California desert is the first of its kind, and may be among the last, in part because of growing evidence that the technology it uses is killing birds. U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz is scheduled to speak Thursday at an opening ceremony for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station, which received a $1.6 billion federal loan guarantee. The $2.2 billion solar farm, which spans over five square miles of federal land southwest of Las Vegas, includes three towers as...

The Ivanpah solar power plant stretches over more than five square miles of the Mojave Desert. Almost 350,000 mirrors the size of garage doors tilt toward the sun with an ability to energize 140,000 homes. The plant, which took almost four years and thousands of workers assembling millions of parts to complete, officially opened on Thursday, the first electric generator of its kind. It could also be the last. Since the project began, the price of rival technologies has plummeted, incentives have begun to disappear and the appetite among investors for mammoth solar farms has waned. Although several large, new...

The world’s largest solar plant is officially online in the Mojave desert — and it is causing some dismay.That’s because the technology the $2.2 billion Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating Station uses could be a threat to wildlife — it generates heat so intense there’s growing evidence it is scorching birds, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The world's largest solar plant of its kind, set to produce 400 megawatts of energy for homes in southwest U.S. has been switched on today. The Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, which covers five square miles of the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada border, has formally opened after years of regulatory and legal tangles ranging from relocating protected tortoises to assessing the impact on Mojave milkweed and other plants. The $2.2billion complex sees more than 300,000 gigantic mirrors reflect green solar power to three generating units with boilers placed on towers rising 460ft above the desert. Ivanpah, a joint project...

Two months ago, 34 birds were found dead or injured on the site of the Ivanpah solar plant owned by BrightSource Energy in east San Bernardino County, California. Almost half suffered from singed feathers after running afoul of the plant’s reflected beams of sunlight, according to a report from The Desert Sun. This was not an isolated incident: another 19 were found dead at the 500-megawatt Desert Sunlight plant, which is also located in California. So what’s going on here? Why are birds dropping like their winged-brethren, flies, around these plants and what can we do? The Californian desert has...

What is going on with the California based Ivanpah solar plant? In April 2011, Brightsource Energy received a loan guarantee of $1.6 billion from the Department of Energy for the California-based Ivanpah project. It’s located along I-15 at the California-Nevada border, 29 miles northeast of Barstow. The loan amount was three times that given by the DOE to the now bankrupt California solar company Solyndra. At the time of the April 2011 loan, the man at the controls as board chairman of Brightsource was John Bryson. He served in that capacity from September 2010 to January 2012. The loan was...

When it comes to attracting business to California's eastern deserts, Inyo County is none too choosy. Since the 19th century the sparsely populated county has worked to attract industries shunned by others, including gold, tungsten and salt mining. The message: Your business may be messy, but if you plan to hire our residents, the welcome mat is out. So the county grew giddy last year as it began to consider hosting a huge, clean industry. BrightSource Energy, developer of the proposed $2.7-billion Hidden Hills solar power plant 230 miles northeast of Los Angeles, promised a bounty of jobs and a...

One of the most important issues in this year's election is energy. Our ongoing addiction to Mideast oil leaves us dependent on countries that are often unstable and hostile. Developing our own domestic energy resources and investing in renewable energy lessens this dependence. It also has the potential to create jobs and improve our trade deficit. The two presidential candidates have laid out energy plans that sound similar: both President Obama and Governor Romney want to continue to develop domestic energy resources, including renewable energy, with the aim of making the U.S. less dependent on foreign oil. But according to...

House Republicans are broadening their probe of the Department of Energy’s largest solar-loan guarantee. Rep. Darrell Issa, the California Republican who chairs the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, sent letters to the White House and BrightSource Energy Inc., the loan-guarantee recipient, asking for e-mails and other documents related to the $1.6 billion deal. The Wall Street Journal viewed copies of the letters, which are dated June 7. SNIP Mr. Issa’s committee in March asked BrightSource and other loan guarantee recipients for communications with the Department of Energy prior to key announcement related to the deals. The June 7 letter...

Bad stuff always happens on Friday the 13th. So it was on Friday that BrightSource Energy, the large solar energy company that has already received $868 million of a $1.6-billion loan guarantee, canceled its IPO application. And that same day, President Obama appointed Heather Zichal to head a new high-level task force to coordinate regulation of hydraulic fracking. The two events, both highly inauspicious, were not unrelated. The connection is simple and obvious: in order to prop up failing solar companies, Obama needs to force natural gas prices higher. Solar energy companies like BrightSource can't seem to compete without government...

BrightSource Energy of Oakland, a solar power-plant developer whose first project won $1.6 billion in federal backing, abruptly canceled its initial public stock offering Wednesday night, just hours before trading was scheduled to begin. The surprise move killed what had been the most hotly anticipated clean-tech IPO this spring. It casts doubt on investor appetite for similar offerings in the future. The cancellation could also revive the debate over federal support for renewable power companies. Solar-module maker Solyndra of Fremont, which received $528 million from the same government program that funded BrightSource's first power plant, also canceled a planned IPO...

Solar thermal technology startup BrightSource Energy hopes to raise $182.5 million in a long-awaited initial public stock offering, according to an amended S-1 filed with the SEC Wednesday. The Oakland-based company plans to issue 6.9 million shares, .. at a price between $21 to $23 per share. .. BrightSource uses mirrors to concentrate the sun and turn turbines that generate electricity. It's most advanced project is the massive Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System currently under construction on federal land in California's Mojave Desert. When completed next year, Ivanpah will be the largest solar thermal power plant in the world, generating...

Stubborn does not come close to describing the desert tortoise, a species that did its evolving more than 220 million years ago and has since remained resolutely prehistoric. At the $2.2-billion BrightSource Energy solar farm in the Ivanpah Valley, the tortoise brought construction to a standstill for three months when excavation work found far more animals than biologists expected. BrightSource has spent $56 million so far to protect and relocate the tortoises, but even at that price, the work has met with unforeseen calamity: Animals crushed under vehicle tires, army ants attacking hatchlings in a makeshift nursery and one small...

Funny how some projects attract the EPA like flies to, well, you know and others? Meh. The LA Times reports: Construction cranes rise like storks 40 stories above the Mojave Desert. In their midst, the "power tower" emerges, wrapped in scaffolding and looking like a multistage rocket. Clustered nearby are hangar-sized assembly buildings, looming berms of sand and a chain mail of fencing that will enclose more than 3,500 acres of public land. Moorings for 173,500 mirrors — each the size of a garage door — are spiked into the desert floor. Before the end of the year, they will...