Boiling Point: Farewell to Ivanpah, the world’s ugliest solar plant
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Sometimes, government makes a bad bet.
Case in point: the Ivanpah solar project. Maybe you’ve seen the unsightly, blindingly bright towers while traveling from L.A. to Las Vegas, in the Mojave Desert near the California-Nevada state line. Maybe you’ve read about birds getting fried to death as they fly through the sunlight directed to the tops of the towers by fields of mirrors.
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When state officials agreed to let Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison buy power from Ivanpah roughly 15 years ago, they saw this type of technology — known as “concentrated solar power” — as the future of renewable energy. It was expensive, but it would get cheaper over time — and therefore it made sense to let PG&E and Edison customers pay for it through their electric rates, state officials decided.
Federal officials made a similar bet, helping finance Ivanpah through $1.6 billion in loan guarantees.
They were all wrong. Ivanpah’s concentrated solar technology, which uses sunlight to heat a fluid and generate steam, never worked as well as expected. Meanwhile, solar photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight directly to electricity got super cheap. Ivanpah quickly became known as an expensive, bird-killing eyesore.
All of which led to PG&E’s surprise announcement this month that it had struck a deal with the plant’s owners to stop buying electricity from Ivanpah. Assuming that state officials sign off — which they most likely will, because the deal will lead to lower bills for PG&E customers — two of the three towers will shut down come 2026.
Ivanpah’s owners haven’t paid off the project’s $1.6-billion federal loan, and it’s unclear whether they’ll be able to do so. Houston-based NRG Energy, which operates Ivanpah and is a co-owner with Kelvin Energy and Google, said that federal officials took part in the negotiations to close PG&E’s towers and that the closure agreement will allow the federal government “to maximize the recovery of its loans.”
It’s possible Ivanpah’s third and final tower will close, too. An Edison spokesperson told me the utility is in “ongoing discussions” with the project’s owners and the federal government over ending the utility’s contract.
It might be tempting to conclude government should stop placing bets and just let the market decide.
But if it weren’t for taxpayers dollars, large-scale solar farms, which in 2023 produced 17% of California’s power, might never have matured into low-cost, reliable electricity sources capable of displacing planet-warming fossil fuels. More than a decade ago, federal loans helped finance some of the nation’s first big solar-panel farms.
Not every government investment will be a winner. Renewable energy critics still raise the specter of Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer that filed for bankruptcy in 2011 after receiving a $535-million federal loan.
But on the whole, clean power investments have worked out. The U.S. Department of Energy reported that as of Dec. 31, it had disbursed $40.5 billion in loans. Of that amount, $15.2 billion had already been repaid. The federal government was on the hook for $1.03 billion in estimated losses but had reaped $5.6 billion in interest.
In its final days, President Biden’s team rushed to approve as many loans as possible. Officials finalized a $996-million loan for a lithium mine on public lands in Nevada to supply lithium for electric vehicle batteries; a $15-billion loan to PG&E to help the utility expand hydropower, add batteries and upgrade electric lines; and a $6.6-billion loan to help Southern California electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian complete a factory in Georgia.
It also announced a conditional $1.36-billion loan commitment to help EnergySource produce lithium from geothermal brine deep beneath Southern California’s Salton Sea. (I’ve written previously about EnergySource.)
Not all of those loans have unanimous support even among climate advocates. Some conservation activists, for instance, worry that the Nevada lithium mine could wipe out an endangered wildflower.
But as I’ve written before, there’s no single solution to the climate crisis: We’ll need a wide array of technologies to replace coal, oil and gas. Solar panels, wind turbines, electric cars — they can do a lot of the work, but not all of it. We need zero-emission solutions for aviation and steelmaking. We need to make sure the lights stay on 24/7.
In 2025 and beyond, that’s the value of government investment.
“It’s not clear in the early stages what technologies will work best,” said Don Howerton, PG&E’s senior director of commercial procurement, in a written statement on the utility’s decision to back out of Ivanpah.
Indeed, if federal officials are doing their jobs well, some of the Biden administration’s loans won’t get paid back. That’s the risk inherent to betting on early-stage technologies. The reward, with any luck, is a world with not as much deadly air pollution from fossil fuels — and not as many devastating fires, heat waves and storms.
Alas, the Trump administration has taken the opposite approach to clean energy.
Not only did President Trump pause all disbursement of funds from Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act — the source of billions of dollars in federal energy loan funding — he also paused all renewable energy project approvals on public lands. He singled out Idaho’s sprawling Lava Ridge wind farm for special treatment, seeking to block its construction even though the Biden administration already approved the project last month.
Power companies see the writing on the wall. After previously announcing it would retire two Utah coal plants in 2036 and 2042, Warren Buffett’s PacifiCorp utility now says it will keep operating the plants indefinitely.
Trump’s Cabinet nominees have similar fossil fuel-friendly worldviews. Take Doug Burgum, who’s headed toward a Senate confirmation vote to run the Interior Department. As North Dakota’s governor, Burgum repeatedly sued Interior, often in an effort to prioritize oil and gas drilling over conservation on public lands.
So for the next four years, we’ll probably be talking less about how much federal agencies should bet on climate-friendly energy and more about why they’re betting on climate destruction. Which is a damned shame.
When the Ivanpah towers start to come down, though? I’d like to be there to watch.
Maybe they never should have been built. They’re too expensive, they don’t work right, they kill too many birds. And, at least in my opinion, they’re pretty horrifying to look at. It’s good that their time is coming to an end.
But we should take inspiration from them, too: Don’t get complacent. Keep trying new things.
On that note, here’s what else is happening around the West:
FALLOUT FROM THE FIRES
President Trump visited Los Angeles on Friday to see the destruction from the Palisades fire. He continued to make false claims linking the devastation to California water policy, saying, “If they released the water when I told them to — because I told them to do it seven years ago — if they would have done it, you wouldn’t have had the problem that you had. You ... might not have even had a fire.”
Why is Trump so obsessed with California water policy, especially an endangered fish called the delta smelt? My colleague Ian James explained what’s going on. Ian also wrote about one of Trump’s first executive orders, titled “Putting People over Fish: Stopping Radical Environmentalism to Provide Water to Southern California.”
If you’d rather read a hopeful wildlife story, The Times’ Lila Sediman wrote about government biologists rescuing hundreds of tiny endangered fish from burned-out parts of the Santa Monica Mountains in the nick of time.
Meanwhile, Angelenos continue to reel from the infernos. My colleagues Kate Sequeira and Jenny Gold report that hundreds of child-care facilities remain closed, putting many parents in a terrible position. One estimate now places the total economic losses from the fires at more than $250 billion, per The Times’ Roger Vincent.
California lawmakers have approved $2.5 billion in wildfire aid, Taryn Luna and Julia Wick report. It’s not yet clear if the Trump administration will reimburse the state, as is traditionally done after extreme weather disasters.
A few other fire-related stories:
- The U.S. and Australia have long lent each other firefighters. But with the climate crisis creating yearlong fire seasons, that partnership can’t be counted on anymore. (Max Kim and Maria Petrakis, L.A. Times)
- The former mayor of Paradise, Calif. — which was largely destroyed by the 2018 Camp fire — says Angelenos must embrace difficult fire safety upgrades, or the city will never rebuild. (Noah Haggerty, L.A. Times)
- Big insurance companies are investing your premiums in oil and gas companies whose products fuel more extreme wildfires — leading to higher premiums and more dropped policies. (Marcus Baram, Capital & Main)
THAT OTHER FIRE
Battery storage systems are crucial clean energy technologies. Lithium-ion battery installations soak up solar power for after dark, making it increasingly possible to keep the lights on without coal and gas plants.
Batteries also, occasionally, catch fire.
That was the case this month, when one of the world’s largest battery storage plants erupted in flames at Moss Landing near Monterey. Details here from The Times’ Clara Harter, who reports that the fire burned for five days and destroyed around 80% of the batteries at the Vistra Energy facility. A Pacific Gas & Electric battery installation next door wasn’t affected.
“I know green is good, but we’ve got to move slowly,” Monterey County Supervisor Glenn Church said.
This isn’t the first battery fire at Moss Landing. Vistra’s facility has had two previous fires, and PG&E’s battery bank experienced a fire of its own. A few other energy storage facilities have suffered similar problems.
People living near Moss Landing are concerned, despite assurances from the Environmental Protection Agency that air monitoring for hydrogen fluoride and particulate matter showed no health risk. A state lawmaker has proposed a bill that would require local government approval for battery storage projects, taking the authority out of the hands of state officials, Kyarra Harris reports for the Monterey Herald.
Elsewhere in California and even in other states, the latest Moss Landing incident is stoking opposition to battery storage projects. It doesn’t matter that these fires are extremely rare relative to the rapid growth of the storage industry, or that fossil fuels are far more dangerous. It makes sense why many people are concerned.
But as Julian Spector explains in an excellent story for Canary Media, battery technologies and safety standards have evolved substantially since the Moss Landing facility was built just a few years ago. The fire problem hasn’t been solved completely. But the industry is moving in the right direction. There are reasons for optimism.
ONE MORE THING
Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District could decide as soon as Wednesday whether to fire its general manager, Adel Hagekhalil, over harassment allegations. The long-awaited decision could have huge implications for how the powerful water supplier adapts to climate change. Details here from The Times’ Ian James.
You may recall I had some thoughts on the whole situation.
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