BOILING POINT
Climate-friendlier solar, wind farms
Let’s say we can solve the climate crisis. We can build all the clean energy infrastructure we need to replace fossil fuels over the next 30 years, and we can do it without triggering blackouts or causing electricity costs to rise too much.
Assuming that’s possible — would you be willing to pay 3% more on your energy bills to protect the natural world?
That number comes from a new study by the Nature Conservancy, an environmental advocacy group, finding the American West can generate enough renewable power to tackle climate change even if some of its most ecologically valuable landscapes are placed off-limits to solar and wind farms — without causing costs to spiral out of control.
It’s an optimistic outlook — and a potent reminder of one of the biggest obstacles to renewable energy.
Yes, solar and wind have become just about the cheapest sources of new electricity on the market. And, yes, they were expanding rapidly even before President Biden signed a landmark climate bill in August that should supercharge their growth.
But finding places to build all the clean energy we’ll need to limit global warming isn’t getting any easier.
As developers flood rural communities and remote landscapes with proposals for solar fields and wind turbines, they often face intense opposition from conservationists dedicated to protecting habitat for migratory birds, sage grouse and desert tortoises — and from local residents who see industrial energy infrastructure as a threat to their small-town way of life.
That kind of opposition could slow or block clean energy development, resulting in a climate catastrophe.
All of which brings us back to the Nature Conservancy study, which is currently finishing up a peer review.
The study took an expansive look at the long-term clean energy needs of 11 Western states — including the charging needs of tens of millions of electric cars — and the land available to produce that clean energy. After running a series of gigantic models, the authors concluded that powering the West could require 26 million acres — an area roughly half the size of Utah.
But that finding assumed that the only places off-limits to solar and wind farms were areas already protected by law, such as national parks and wildlife refuges. So the Nature Conservancy ran the models again, this time blocking renewable energy development in many other areas — including wetlands, critical habitat for endangered species and other lands identified by Nature Conservancy scientists as valuable for wildlife and humans, such as migration corridors and the best agricultural soils.
This time, the models spat out substantially different results. Under those limits, the West could meet its clean power needs with just 21 million acres of solar, wind and other zero-carbon resources. The overall cost would be $268 billion through 2050 — just 3% higher than the estimated $260-billion price tag without the additional land constraints.
Nicole Hill, the Nature Conservancy’s project manager, said she was “genuinely surprised” the cost difference was so small. It’s a big deal, she said, because it means voters and politicians don’t have to choose between climate action and biodiversity.
“There is plenty of land to do this work,” she said.
The study mapped out several strategies for getting from 26 million acres down to 21 million.
One of them is building fewer wind farms in the West’s windiest states, particularly Wyoming, and more solar farms in the sunny desert Southwest. Wind farms require a lot more land area to produce the same amount of power, in part because wind turbines need to be spaced far apart. Solar farms have a smaller overall footprint by comparison.
The windiest spots also tend to be far from major population centers. Solar farms can be built closer to big cities with the biggest energy needs, including Los Angeles and Phoenix, meaning they require fewer miles of habitat-disrupting power lines.
Another key strategy: building more solar panels and wind turbines on agricultural land.
The Nature Conservancy reached a similar conclusion in a California-specific study a few years ago. The basic idea is that hundreds of millions of acres in the West have already been plowed and generally torn up, and it makes more sense to convert some of those lands to renewable energy than to pave over undisturbed habitat — especially in farm belts such as California’s San Joaquin Valley, where climate-fueled megadrought is leaving less water available for irrigating fields of crops.
Of course, reality is more complicated than a bunch of computer models. Agriculture is the economic cornerstone for many rural communities, not to mention the source of the food we eat. Across the country, small-town residents have rallied to protest proposed solar projects in particular, since those facilities often — but don’t always — preclude farming.
The Nature Conservancy took those concerns into account, excluding federally designated “prime farmland” from the modeling alongside valuable habitat. That left plenty of lower-quality agricultural areas for development, the authors said.
“Not all irrigated lands are created equal,” said Nels Johnson, the Nature Conservancy’s North America energy program director. “Some are on marginal soils, and they’re producing really low-value crops, while others are on really high-value soils.”
This kind of ecologically friendly energy strategy could have benefits beyond protecting wildlife.
For instance, developers who seek to build in less sensitive spots might be able to get government permits more quickly, while reducing the likelihood of lawsuits. An earlier Nature Conservancy study, focused on California, found that solar farms proposed for lands with lower biodiversity got permitted nearly three times faster, helping accelerate the clean energy transition.
The key to making this all work in practice is collaboration and planning, the Nature Conservancy says. Western states must work together to map out where clean energy should be built and which lands should be protected, much like California did with the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan, Johnson said.
“When you get a more collaborative approach to planning, you get fewer lawsuits, less conflict,” he said. “When people get a chance to help define what the future looks like, they’re much less likely to be resistant.”
Still, it’s just about impossible to build a solar or wind farm — or any other clean energy project — without at least some opposition. Collaboration and planning can go a long way, but they’ll never avert every land-use conflict.
It’s also important to acknowledge the trade-offs inherent to the Nature Conservancy’s vision. If companies build fewer wind farms in Wyoming and more solar farms in California, it could be good for golden eagles and other birds flying through Wyoming — and bad for California desert species such as fringe-toed lizards and bighorn sheep.
“There’s no totally free lunch when it comes to deploying the level of infrastructure that we’re talking about,” Johnson said.
Still, there are ways to limit the damage. The more solar installations get built on lands already degraded by human activity — such as abandoned mines, Superfund sites, landfills and railroad corridors — the less pristine desert will be needed.
Solar panels on rooftops, warehouses and parking lots can also limit the need for desert development. The Nature Conservancy’s study assumes 35% of the West’s overall rooftop solar potential will actually get installed by 2050 — an ambitious target, although some rooftop solar supporters might argue we can do even better.
“Every megawatt [of rooftop] is one less megawatt we’re fighting over in an agricultural area or a natural area,” Johnson said.
Again, reality is more complicated than a computer model, especially once politics and economic self-interest come into play. Just consider the many times unionized electrical workers have lobbied against rooftop solar in California because most rooftop solar companies are nonunion shops, and those union workers want to create more jobs for themselves building large solar farms.
Historical factors could also make it harder to balance climate action and conservation.
Dustin Mulvaney, an environmental studies professor at San Jose State University who has collaborated previously with the Nature Conservancy, said he was encouraged by the new study’s findings. But he also pointed to the reality that solar and wind energy developers are constantly looking to build projects on public lands, including some of the highest-quality habitat left in the West — despite the opposition they often face from conservationists, and the seemingly not-so-high costs of building elsewhere.
One possible reason, Mulvaney said, is the existence of long-distance power lines that previously carried coal power to L.A. and other cities. Many of those lines were built across public lands — and now they have spare capacity as coal plants shut down.
Tapping into those lines is often the cheapest way for solar and wind developers to ship electricity to urban customers — as long as they build projects close enough to connect. In other words, as long as they build on the surrounding public lands.
“It opens up all these conflicts along these pathways,” Mulvaney said.
Mulvaney is hopeful that the Nature Conservancy study will help chart a more sustainable future. He said the research could be especially useful for finding consensus on where to build new power lines — one of the most difficult and controversial aspects of the clean energy transition. The Nature Conservancy estimates a need for 6,259 miles of new power-line corridors.
That’s a lot of power lines. Then again, the U.S. did manage to build nearly 50,000 miles of interstate highways.
