Summit County Citizens Voice

Community advocates want more focus on distributed solar power generation

Photovoltaic panels at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Editor’s note: Saguache County resident Chuck Tidd delivered this comment at the March 6, 2011 BLM public meeting to gathering public input on the Solar PEIS proposal to open 128,000 acres of public lands in Colorado (mostly in the San Luis Valley) and 22 million acres across six western states, for industrial solar development. Chuck is an off-grid resident, owner of Southern Colorado Appraisal Services and a member of the San Luis Valley Renewable Communities board of directors.

By Chuck Tidd

By putting forward a plan to approve large scale solar developments on BLM land, the BLM is implicitly endorsing an energy paradigm whose time has come to an end.

This is the paradigm of large power generating facilities that transmit the electricity produced over thousands of miles of transmission lines.

This paradigm makes sense when talking about conventional forms of power generation – coal, natural gas, nuclear. But when talking about generating power from sunlight, this paradigm becomes far less efficient. It will destroy intact ecosystems on tens or even hundreds of thousands of acres of land, and it fails to use the built environment for point-of-use energy production.

Not only will the lands on which these projects be affected, but they will mandate the construction of expensive new transmission lines, which are not addressed in the PEIS, further unnecessarily degrading our open space. And who will pay for these expensive boondoggles? Electricity rate payers, that’s who. (more…)

Filed under: Colorado, energy, Environment | Tagged: BLM, BLM solar PEIS, Bureau of Land management, Colorado, distributed generation, renewable energy, Renewable energy in the United States, solar energy, Solar energy zones, Summit County Colorado, Summit County News, Xcel energy | 3 Comments »