BackstoryLarge-scale renewable energy projects benefit the climate but can harm ecosystems. Critics fear that industrial solar arrays planned for California and Nevada will ruin viewsheds, guzzle water, and destroy the habitat of threatened desert tortoises (“Sacrificial land: Will renewable energy devour the Mojave Desert?” HCN, 4/15/13). In October 2013, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced that […]
Renewable energy
Posted inSeptember 2, 2013: Of Sparrows and Sodbusters
Idaho Power is waging war on renewable energy. Is it winning?
One of the West’s great old-school monopolies and its multi-pronged attack on wind and solar.
Posted inMay 27, 2013: Haywired
The power grid may determine whether we can kick our carbon habit
Minutes before 4 p.m. on a sizzling September day two years ago, right at the time when they were most needed, San Diego’s air conditioners suddenly died. Thousands of television and computer screens also flickered into darkness. Stoplights stopped working, gas stations ceased pumping, and traffic slowed to a snarl. Trains ground to a halt […]
Posted inApril 15, 2013: Sacrificial Land
Sacrificial Land: Will renewable energy devour the Mojave Desert?
Over breakfast at the Crowbar Café in Shoshone, Calif., Brian Brown explains to me how he makes a living. Shoshone is a town of 31 in the Mojave Desert near the Nevada border; Brown runs his own business here, the China Ranch Date Farm. In the late summer, he strips offshoots from unproductive palm trees […]
Posted inMay 28, 2012: The Gila Bend Photon Club
The fading Arizona town of Gila Bend bets big on solar
One afternoon last April, I took a walk down Pima Street, the main drag that runs through Gila Bend, Ariz., linking the state highway from Phoenix with Interstate 8 to Yuma and beyond. It had been an unusual spring in the Southwestern deserts; abundant late-season rains spread carpets of green across rocky hillsides in the […]
Posted inMay 4, 2009: Salmon Salvation
High Noon
As the climate warms, environmentalists square off over Big Solar’s claim to the Mojave Desert
Posted inArticles
From poo to power
Poop. That’s what powers Bartertown, the violent setting of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, the 1985 post-apocalyptic movie. Beneath the crime-ridden city, one man controls the seething, stinky pig-manure pit from which electricity is generated — and he can shut off the power at will. Fortunately, that’s not the pattern for biofuel these days. Instead, the […]
Posted inArticles
Soakin’ in southwestern Colorado
Centuries before prospectors flooded Ouray, Colo. in search of silver and gold, Ute Indians discovered the town’s true treasure: natural hot springs. Today, people flock to Ouray for those same “sacred healing waters.” And on an immaculate day in October, so did I, as part of a jeep caravan that toured the tidy town’s geothermal […]
Posted inJanuary 23, 2006: Timberlands up for grabs
Renewable law leaves the gate
When Colorado voters approved Amendment 37 in 2004, most had no idea how long it would take for the state’s renewable standards to go into effect. More than a year later, the state’s Public Utilities Commission finally released the rules implementing the law, which requires the state’s largest utilities to generate 10 percent of their […]
Posted inWotr
The windy West gains influential support
The wind blows constantly across the Western plains, as anyone who’s driven north from Denver and across Wyoming can attest. You feel your car needs alignment until you see the tumbleweeds bustling towards Kansas City. That’s why America’s heartland has been called the Saudi Arabia of wind, and that’s why we should be looking closely […]
Posted inDecember 26, 2005: A New Green Revolution
Organics and biofuels bring independence
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “A New Green Revolution.” For years, conventional farmers and other naysayers could dismiss organic farming with a wave of the hand: too many man-hours, too much tilling to control weeds, too few markets. But because organic farming uses no petroleum-based fertilizers or pesticides, it […]
Posted inDecember 12, 2005: The Final Energy Frontier
Forget idealism
Renewable energy will save consumers money
Posted inAugust 8, 2005: The Gangs of Zion
Birds get a break from blades
This winter, the whirling blades of half of the more than 5,000 windmills perched atop Altamont Pass will grind to a halt for two months. That plan will allow migrating birds to fly safely through the area. Under new county permitting rules, the windmill companies, which supply power for 120,000 homes, will halt their turbines […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Blades, birds and bats: Wind energy and wildlife not a cut-and-dried issue
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Winds of Change.” If you think wind energy is a good alternative to fossil fuels, but you also care about wildlife, you’ve probably worried about the possible “lawnmower” effect of spinning wind turbines on birds and bats. At least some of that concern […]
Posted inMay 2, 2005: The Great Energy Divide
Renewable Energy Standards: How do states match up?
Note: This article is a sidebar to this issue’s feature story, “The Winds of Change.” Arizona — Adopted in 200. Utilities must generate 1.1 percent of electricity from renewable energy by 2007; 60 percent of the 1.1 percent must be from solar. California — Adopted in 2002. 20 percent by 2017 for investor-owned utilities. Colorado […]
Posted inMarch 7, 2005: Anarchy in the Gas Fields
Easterners tilt at windmills while Westerners joust with a real foe
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]
Posted inFebruary 7, 2005: The Asphalt Graveyard
Los Angeles dumps coal deal
Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn has directed the city’s Department of Water and Power to pull out of a deal to expand a coal-fired power plant in Delta, Utah. The funds earmarked for the project — which would have provided 2 percent of the city’s power — will instead be used to meet the mayor’s […]
Posted inWotr
Surprise: Easterners balk at a giant wind farm
While Wyoming ranchers and hunters are facing off with gas companies eager to drill their rangelands and hunting grounds, Massachusetts lobster barons are facing their own showdown with an energy juggernaut. Has the West found an ally in Eastern blue bloods and politicians such as Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass.? Not exactly. In Wyoming’s Powder River […]
Posted inNovember 22, 2004: Conservationist in a Conservative Land
Colorado voters snub coal for all things renewable
Not long after Enron, one of our larger humpty-dumpties, had its great fall, I heard a supporter say he missed its CEO, because “Ken Lay was a visionary. He wanted to cover parts of Texas with wind turbines and export that clean energy to the rest of the country.” Yeah, a visionary. Wind or natural […]
Posted inWotr
Colorado snubs coal for all things renewable
Not long after Enron, one of our larger humpty-dumpties, had its great fall, I heard a supporter say he missed its CEO, because “Ken Lay was a visionary. He wanted to cover parts of Texas with wind turbines and export that clean energy to the rest of the country.” Yeah, a visionary. Wind or natural […]