World's largest solar project prompts environmental debate

Panoche Valley is known mostly for cattle and barbed wire, a treeless landscape in eastern San Benito County that turns green every spring but for much of the year looks like rural Nevada.

A posse of lawmen gunned down the famous Gold Rush bandit Joaquin Murrieta, an inspiration for the fictional character Zorro, near here in 1853. Nothing that exciting has happened since.

But now the remote valley 25 miles south of Hollister is finding itself at the center of a new showdown. A Silicon Valley company is proposing to build here what would be the world’s largest solar farm — 1.2 million solar panels spread across an area roughly the size of 3,500 football fields.
“This is renewable energy. It doesn’t

cause pollution, it doesn’t use coal or foreign oil, and it emits no greenhouse gases,” said Mike Peterson, CEO of Solargen Energy, the Cupertino company behind the $1.8 billion project.

But critics — including some environmentalists — say green energy isn’t always green. In a refrain being heard increasingly across California, they contend the plan to cover this ranch land with a huge solar project would harm a unique landscape and its wildlife.

From the Bay Area to the Mojave Desert, green energy supporters are frustrated that a state that wants to lead the green revolution is facing roadblocks.

Peterson, a former vice president of Goldman Sachs, looked across the Panoche Valley last week and noted its attributes.
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It sits 20 miles from the nearest town. It has 90 percent of the solar intensity of the Mojave Desert. Five willing sellers, mostly longtime ranching families, have signed options to sell his company 18,000 acres. And huge transmission lines run through the site, negating the need to build the kind of costly and controversial new power lines that have stalled similar projects.

“From our standpoint, this is a perfect place,” he said. “If not here, where?”

The project would produce 420 megawatts of electricity, roughly the same as a medium-sized natural gas power plant, and enough to power 315,000 homes.

But in recent weeks, the Santa Clara Valley, Monterey Peninsula and Fresno chapters of the Audubon Society have opposed the project.

“One of our biggest worries is the size. There are no other projects like it,” said Shani Kleinhaus, an environmental advocate with the Santa Clara Valley Audubon Society. “There is really very little information on how these sorts of projects impact the environment. We really don’t know.”

Among their primary concerns: Panoche Valley is home to several endangered species, including the San Joaquin kit fox, the blunt-nosed leopard lizard and the giant kangaroo rat. Additionally, an estimated 130 species of birds have been observed in the valley, including the bald eagle, golden eagle and prairie falcon.

Mercury News