Issues of concern to people who live in the west: property rights, water rights, endangered species, livestock grazing, energy production, wilderness and western agriculture. Plus a few items on western history, western literature and the sport of rodeo... Frank DuBois served as the NM Secretary of Agriculture from 1988 to 2003. DuBois is a former legislative assistant to a U.S. Senator, a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Interior, and is the founder of the DuBois Rodeo Scholarship.
Wednesday, October 01, 2014
RENEWABLE ENERGY: Dark cloud over solar plans
The Obama administration’s push for big solar plants and other
renewable energy projects on public lands has started to stall as
developers question whether they can finish projects in time to qualify
for key federal subsidies. Just days after U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell came to Palm Springs to trumpet the success of these projects in combating climate change, Oakland-based BrightSource Energy abruptly scrapped its plans
to build a solar “power tower” project on about six square miles of
desert between Indio and Blythe in eastern Riverside County. The company’s Sept. 26 decision was especially surprising because the project was expected to be approved next month by the California Energy Commission.
Joe Desmond, a BrightSource vice president, acknowledged last week that he didn’t believe the Palen project, featuring a 750-foot boiler tower heated by mirrors, would be built in time to qualify for a subsidy that would have Uncle Sam pay nearly a third of the cost.
Desmond was referring to a 30 percent tax credit for completed renewable energy projects that’s scheduled to drop to just 10 percent Jan. 1, 2017.
Getting the tax credit essentially means getting the financing to build, said Mike Taylor, the research director for the Washington, D.C.-based Solar Electric Power Association.
But now financiers “can’t assume the tax credit will be available when the project is done,” Taylor said. “They have to assume a worst-case scenario.”
Too many things can go wrong for anyone to count on a large-scale solar tower project being built in two years, Taylor said.
Officially, however, BrightSource officials did not blame the subsidy situation for its Palen retreat. The company’s official statement said the firm needed to bring forward a different project “that would better meet the needs of the market and energy consumers.”
On Monday, company officials declined to discuss the decision...more
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