Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:08 Good planet. It's a hot zone. Tropic climbs, thriving, sea blowing some freezing trees. Strong on sunshine. Good planets are hard to find.
Speaker 0 00:00:34 Good planet.
Speaker 2 00:00:35 Hello, case squid listeners. It's every other Sunday again. And you're listening to sustainability now, a biweekly case, good radio show focused on environment, sustainability and social justice in the Monterey Bay region, California and the world. I'm your host, Ronnie Lipitz. In the face of climate change, jurisdictions across the country and the world have set ambitious electrification goals that will rely heavily on solar, wind, and other zero carbon energy sources. California is no exception to reach those goals. The state's private utilities and community choice aggregators are buying low cost electricity from the vast solar farms across the seemingly empty deserts of the American Southwest. But those spaces are not empty, and their ecologies are very fragile. My guest today is Professor Dustin Mulvaney of the Environmental Studies Department at San Jose State University, an expert on solar energy. For the past few years, he's been studying the social and ecological impacts of large solar farms on the deserts and whether they can contribute to a just energy transition. Professor Dustin Mulvaney, welcome back to sustainability. Now.
Speaker 3 00:01:46 Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 00:01:48 Well, why don't we start with a little bit of background, you know, who are you and what do you do and why are you here
Speaker 3 00:01:55 <laugh>? Well, I'm interested in sustainable energy, and I think that's something we share in common. And I am a professor of environmental studies in at San Jose State University, and I've been there since about 2011. And I, before that, I did a postdoc at uc, Berkeley. And before that I did a postdoc with you all folks at uc, Santa Cruz, where I also got my PhD in environmental studies.
Speaker 2 00:02:25 Yeah. What re remind me, what did you, you know, what was your postdoc about? It's been so long ago, I can't even remember.
Speaker 3 00:02:33 Well, we did, the one that we did together at U C S C was around developing a sustainability curriculum and bringing together ideas around Uhhuh, <affirmative> circular economy and environmental justice, and how to bring that to agricultural food systems and energy systems and water systems. So we had a whole crew of faculty shepherding us through that. And I gained a tremendous amount of teaching experience. In fact, I developed some labs that I continue to use in my classes today. And then I went on to uc, Berkeley, where I had a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellowship in the Environmental Science Policy and Management program, where I started to ask questions around the renewable energy transition and what the environmental justice implications of transitioning to more clean tech, uh, would have on communities in the environment.
Speaker 2 00:03:36 So, got into the solar research, sort of not directly because of of energy, but more because of environmental impacts. Is it safe to say that?
Speaker 3 00:03:47 Yeah, I, I would say that I, at the time I became interested in this topic of renewable energy transition in Silicon Valley. There were quite a few startup thin film manufacturers setting up shops. So thin films are one type of solar panel. They're the dominant technology today is called Crystal and Silicon Solar. But there was a lot of hope and enthusiasm at the time around this new technology called Thin Films. And all these pilot manufacturing facilities were, there's at least 15 of them or so in Silicon Valley alone. Were were popping up. I was thinking of, you know, what is a new research area for me to look at, at the time I was teaching a class and teaching, uh, David Pellow and, and Parks, uh, Silicon Valley of Dreams, which was looking at the history of semiconductor manufacturing in Silicon Valley and thinking about the contaminated bodies and the legacy of Superfund sites that were left behind.
Speaker 3 00:04:52 And when I started looking a little more closely at the thin film manufacturing and realized that they are all based on semiconductors that used cadmium compounds, I started to envision that there could be potential environmental justice implications for the workers and communities where those pilot manufacturing facilities were, were being set up. So that's when I actually initiated, or we cod uh, a collaboration with the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, and we wrote a white paper called Adjust and Sustainable Solar Industry in early 2009 that got us thinking about a just transition and, and how to think about a solar future that benefits communities and doesn't imperil workers with contaminants.
Speaker 2 00:05:39 Well, how do you think we're doing now? It's now what, 15 years later? Time flies Dustin.
Speaker 3 00:05:46 Yeah, things have really changed. Things changed pretty quickly, actually. Um, you know, by, so the, the timeframe I'm talking about is like 2007 to 2009 is when I started to become interested and learn quite a bit about this. And by 2010 and 2011, it was pretty clear that thin films were gonna get beat by manufacturing of crystal and silicon that was shifting over, uh, largely to China, Uhhuh <affirmative>. And the, you know, there that led to a whole solar trade war, which continues today where we put tariffs on crystal and silicon that's coming from, from China. Uh, and many of those thin film manufacturers went bankrupt, some of them because of the competition with China. But others, just because that's the nature of a startup, semiconductor manufacturing businesses. Some, some people have the recipe that works and some, some don't. So today we actually only have about 5% of the global supply of floatable tags in, in thin films. And at the time, you know, 2007, 2009, I was seeing charts that were saying it would be 95% thin films by 2020. And that never turned out to be the case. We, you know, the manufacturing, anything in China, uh, can really, you know, outcompete other manufacturing around the world. And we saw it particularly in Germany too. Germany had shuttered a lot of its manufacturing around that same time. So things changed.
Speaker 2 00:07:18 Just just a quick question though. Are, are thin film, is solar viable? I mean, did it, is it because of competition from, uh, crystal and silicon and China that the market tanked in, that tanked? Um, or is it because the technology turned out not to be viable?
Speaker 3 00:07:37 It was a little of both. There was one particular tech technology called SIGs that's copper, Indian, gallium salide that turned out to not be, or turned out to be very difficult to manufacture. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, at scale, Solyndra is probably the most popular example of that. That became a little bit of a, a, a black eye in the news for the solar industry and, and the US federal investments in solar manufacturing because they had built a state-of-the-art facility very quickly, robots all over the floors, um, moving thin film, solar panels around, but they had a, a tubular design that, you know, would collect light that bounced off the rooftop as well, as opposed to a flat plate design, uhhuh <affirmative>. Most solar panels are, and you know, they, they ended up going out business as did many of the other ones. But it's so, but, but the story really was China's push to become the dominant manufacturer. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, and, and the US failed, also failed to invest in its own crystal and silicon. So based on the energy policies we developed, we, we decided to invest in pre-commercial, uh, energy technologies as opposed to commercially, uh, viable ones at the time. The, the idea being that in with a startup, there's this thing called the Valley of Death. Yeah,
Speaker 2 00:09:03 Tell
Speaker 3 00:09:03 Me. And, and you have to <laugh>, you have to like, continue to, um, you know, find funding to build facilities until you become a profitable company. So the idea was that like if we, if the US would only invest in these pre-commercial technologies, that money could carry them across the valley of death, and that would allow them to become successful manufacturers. But it became very difficult. I mean, crystal and silicon, we've been using that technology since it came out of EL Labs in the 1960s. Uh, it's very durable. Crystal and silicone lasts a long time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, that's an issue within films too. Some of those degrade pretty quickly. So, so it was a mixture of both. It was both some technological failures, but also, uh, just a ton of competition from China making, making a product scale and turning it really into a commodity, which it hadn't been before with their, their mass production with without. And what's, oh, was just to add one more piece. Uh, there is one very successful thin film manufacturer named First Solar, and they're a US-based company with lots of manufacturing capacity in Ohio, but also in Malaysia. Uh, so, so that shows that the thin films can work if you have the recipe correct. But they also benefited from many of those same, uh, pre-commercial technology policies that that led to their success.
Speaker 2 00:10:24 But would it be safe to say that without China, the industry wouldn't have taken off the way it has?
Speaker 3 00:10:31 That's a good question. Yeah. I think it's, China has been a very, very important piece of this, of, of the development of, of solar because they committed to building so much of it. Their factories just were enormous mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And every time you build a new factory, it basically makes many of the old factories obsolete because you're, you're making much more efficient panels, usually, maybe even different wafer sizes and things like that. So, so China is really, really, their investments have really benefited all of us. Yeah. Because we're utilizing that technology everywhere. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:11:07 Yeah. Well, um, well, let's get to the topic for, of the show. I mean, you, you started at some point to work on solar farms, solar photo vol farms in the desert. And you know, there, there are many questions that come up, you know, why put them there? Uh, why do few, so few people ever think about deserts as other than empty spaces? And why has putting them in the desert become controversial?
Speaker 3 00:11:34 Yeah. I started to explore the topic of sighting solar farms, uh, through that postdoc I had mentioned earlier, which was ironically funded by the American Recovery Reinvestment Act. And then I ended up studying projects that were investments from the American recovery in reinvestment, alota, solar farms, also that Cylindra factory was a part of that. And I think a couple things. One is deserts have always been thought of as wastelands, right? I think there's kind of a cultural predisposition we all have that deserts are hostile. They're, they're not places that can be productive for human uses. And, you know, we, people probably haven't experienced deserts at the right time to see that they're actually full of life and habitat and wildflowers and, and endangered species to, to some extent too. So that's where the controversies come in, is that in 2005 in the Energy Policy Act, we decided to, or Congress, 78 senators voted for this, decided to open up public lands for solar leasing.
Speaker 3 00:12:52 And, um, what that meant was federal policy developed by the Department of the Interior and administrated by, uh, the Bureau of Land Management, was essentially put directly into conflict with solar development. So essentially, conservation and, and development became, uh, basically on a, a collision course. Um, because you don't have to put projects necessarily on public lands. There's lots of agricultural lands and, and other kinds of lands. But the thinking at the time was that large parcels of land were really important for the early development of the solar industry. At the time, it was thought that concentrated solar, where you use mirrors to direct that heat to a, a centralized receiver, whether it's a power tower or a long tube with concave mirrors, eventually, you know, use that, those mirrors to make steam and turn a turbine. Folks were thinking around 2005, 2006, that that would actually be the predominant solar technology used at the utility scale.
Speaker 3 00:13:59 And that technology also falls apart pretty quickly. Um, partly also because of, of cheap quotable tanks coming from, from China, uh, just being a better option both for, uh, electricity generation, consistent electricity generation, but also just on costs. Um, in fact, early in the early program of the solar leasing program, over 80% of the projects were concentrated solar. And we only have seen a couple of those actually developed. So the, the thinking was large parcels of land, public lands, you know, depart, uh, bureau of Land Management is the nation's largest landlord managing over 245 million acres, and they opened up 22 million acres for first come first. So surf to the solar development at the time mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, um, so that, that basically means that when public lands are developed, they have been in conservation by default because of the history of the Bureau of Land Management and the role that, um, the grazing administration and the general land office who was giving out land from the Homestead Act, uh, basically no one ever wanted those lands. So they're in pretty good shape from a conservation perspective. So the, the whole, so essentially federal policy put, uh, put things like the desert tortoise and bighorn sheep a little bit in, in, in the crosshairs with their, uh, effort to, to try to develop on public lands.
Speaker 2 00:15:31 You're listening to sustainability now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Professor Dustin Mulvaney of San Jose State University. We're talking about vast solar farms being built in the southwest deserts of the United States. Um, so, so tell me a little bit more about, about the argument against citing in the desert. What, you know, what, what sorts of specifics are involved?
Speaker 3 00:16:00 Well, I think we have, we have to remember that we have two crises kind of in parallel, the, the climate crisis where we need to decarbonize our energy systems and other activities. And also we have a biodiversity crisis mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And in California we have, uh, an iconic species called the Desert tortoise, who's lived out there since the time of sabertooth cats. So it's been through quite a bit of climate change, uh, but it's also lost 90% of its population over the last hundred years or so because of urbanization. Uh, Las Vegas, for example. Uh, mining activities, other kinds of, uh, land use change that have taken there as well as disease and things like that. So, and then when you consider also that somewhere on the order of 90% of that species, the desert tortoise occur on federal lands, whether it's managed by the Park Service like Joshua Tree National Park, or, um, the Bureau of Land Management, in some ways, the, the federal government has a very, has an outsized responsibility for the conservation of that species.
Speaker 3 00:17:07 So, um, the notion that you, that you need to, to develop lands that are important, conservation, uh, priorities, um, for technology that you could put anywhere seems to, uh, be undermining the conservation goals while, you know, trying to achieve the, the energy goals there. So I think we have to remember that, you know, across California, we have, first of all, an incredibly enormous agricultural, uh, economy here with, we have a ton of land that's dedicated to agriculture. We have a lot of land that needs to be retired because of overuse of, of the Colorado River or overuse of, uh, groundwater. We have a sustainable groundwater management act that's gonna probably push many of these ag lands to be retired, all to say that there are other alternatives to these particular parcels. And if we want to both be responsible stewards of the species that occur in our region, uh, and also tackle the climate crisis at the same time, we have to find better places to put solar. And we have those places, we just don't have the right incentives to put solar where it needs to go.
Speaker 2 00:18:26 Well, up to now, are most solar farms built on federal land? Um, be because I mean, I imagine the lease, the cost of leasing is pretty low. Right? Whereas if you're gonna go build on farmland, you're gonna have to make a deal with the owner or buy the land. It's just gonna cost more. Right? So, so the, I mean, that's one of the incentives or disincentives that you're referring to.
Speaker 3 00:18:52 Yeah. I mean, I'm thinking like, even in Santa Cruz County, right? There's so much money to be made for strawberry production. No one's gonna switch that, that to solar production. Not anytime soon. Not, no, but
Speaker 2 00:19:03 But you're talking about, you're talking about growing rice in alfalfa, right? Right. And what is essentially a desert, right? Yep. Um, that land will have some residual value when it can't be farmed anymore. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Right. But that's still likely to be much more right than the cost of leasing federal land, which is usually far below market price, I think.
Speaker 3 00:19:27 Yeah. Yeah. Tho those are all important considerations. What, what really determines where solar farms are cited and most profitable is where they have the cheapest access to transmission. Okay. So, land costs don't really drive where solar farms are, uh, power lines do, huh? Okay. So when you think about the history of California, we've always imported electricity, right? I know you're, you're an old erergi from the Energy and Resources Group. You're very familiar with this. And what that meant in the 1960s and seventies and how that's related today is that in 1960s and seventies, we were not able to build any coal fire power plants in California because of the Clean Air Act. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, uh, we were not able to build any natural gas power plants because federal regulations prohibited the use of natural gas for electricity generation at the time. So what that meant is all of our electric utilities, pg and e Southern California, ed Edison built coal fire power plants all over the Colorado plateau, huh?
Speaker 3 00:20:30 Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that means to get them connected to California, we draped power lines across many of our public lands to, to connect the, the, those new, the Navajo generating station, San Juan generating station, the, the power, big power Coalfire power plant in Delta, Utah. We're talking about about a dozen coalfire power plants at least. Um, those power lines today are very, so as we shut down those coalfire power plants in along the Colorado plateau, as their contracts expire, no one wants to renew them. Those power lines suddenly have capacity mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And that means that a solar developer can cite a project near some of those power lines on public lands. And it's a much better deal than citing in on some agricultural land that might be too far when they, so when you apply for, to develop a solar project, you go through this interconnection process and they give you a, a, basically a quote on the value or cost of that interconnection.
Speaker 3 00:21:35 And, you know, often those projects don't get built because they, they're like, oh, that's too expensive. That interconnection is too expensive. So, so developers are going for the cheapest interconnection as possible. So all that means is that our legacy commitment to coal built infrastructures that are there today and have kind of facilitated the controversy today, because now everybody wants to plug in along those power lines cuz that's the cheapest access point. Plus you have that, those big parcels of land under the bureau land management's man, uh, uh, under their management and, um, and that mandate on public to, to develop public land. So that started at, in 2005, that was a 10 gigawatt mandate, and under the Trump administration, they expanded that to 25 gigawatts. So it's been very, if there's anything that's bipartisan using public lands for energy development across the board tends to be very bipartisan. We can get mm-hmm. <affirmative> senators to agree on that all the time. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that's kind of what, where we're at and why we have the situation we have today.
Speaker 2 00:22:41 Well, I mean, it's, it's a bit like the, the way in which US highways tended to follow wagon trails, which tended to follow foot trails. Right. And, and now you wouldn't build interstate highways if you could, you know, in virgin, virgin territory. Right. So, I mean, it's basically, or,
Speaker 3 00:22:59 Or through urban areas Right. Or
Speaker 2 00:23:00 Through urban areas, so. Right. Well, that's interesting. You know, that was something that I, that I hadn't, hadn't realized. So,
Speaker 3 00:23:06 But you asked about the, you asked how much, and so it's about the US has cited about, or has approved about 10 gigawatts worth of solar on public lands. And
Speaker 2 00:23:17 How does that compare to the, you know, total? So,
Speaker 3 00:23:20 So California has about 14, or actually today, I looked it up today, they're generating about 14 gigawatts. So now these public lands projects, some of 'em are in Nevada, and that's, that's why it's kind of hard to like look at California in isolation because mm-hmm. <affirmative> Yeah. Nevada's kind of a resource colony. Right. For California to some extent. And we have a lot of our solar there. Plus we're gonna be building solar for other states. So when we look at like Ken, California power itself put solar, um, at least in the, those middays, we're really talking about like other western states too. In fact, the last couple, uh, years we've been increasingly exporting power. Um, in fact, we, uh, last month we set a record for, uh, exports in a, in a single day. And a lot of that was because of, of the solar generation that's occurring out there. And we have have another 14 gigawatts, by the way, of rooftop solar in, in the state. So, so in, and, you know, for California's grid on a typical day, it's, it ranges between 25 gigawatts and 40 gigawatts. Sorry for all the numbers.
Speaker 2 00:24:30 No, no, that's, that's, that's fine. And, but, uh, the, the, the peaks on really hot days are around 60, 65 gigawatts. Right. What, just, just
Speaker 3 00:24:38 If you're look, if you add in the rooftop solar Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 2 00:24:42 Yeah. But, um, what, what are the require, you know, I mean, California has this very ambitious electrification program, right. Which is going to require more capacity, more solar capacity, as well as, uh, lots and lots of batteries.
Speaker 3 00:24:58 Yep.
Speaker 2 00:24:59 Right. And, um, I mean, what sort of, what are we looking at, you know, how many gigawatts of solar are gonna be required? You know, and I mean, I know wind is also included in the mix, but I doubt wind is gonna be very, a very significant contributor. So
Speaker 3 00:25:16 Offshore wind is supposed to be, um, a, I, I forget what the number is. It's I think 30 gigawatts or something like that. So they're counting on offshore wind. Onshore wind has been very, has not been very valuable mm-hmm. <affirmative> so that we haven't seen much onshore wind. In fact, that seems to be, um, slowing down quite a bit. You know, the, the numbers for, so in California's, uh, global Warming Solutions Act scoping report, they say that we're gonna need somewhere on the order of 3.4 gigawatts annually, 3.4 to be added to, oh, added gig, sorry, annually Yeah. Added to the grid. So that equals another 78 gigawatts by 2045. So when you look at the, how much land that will take up, we're starting to approach a thousand square miles or so of land that would be required to, to meet those goals. And, and I should add also in that same scoping report, there's some, I think there's about 10 gigawatts or so that set aside just for hydrogen production. So like, not at all electricity grid stuff. So there's, we're talking about a pretty big footprint here, which is why I think it's really important to make sure that we, we match, um, you know, these projects with the appropriate lands, um, in more distributed generation. I mean, just look at an aerial photo of like all the warehouses around LAX or the, the Vegas Law Airport. Um, you know, there's no solar on any of these rooftops. Um, because we, we tend to favor, um, what appears to be the cheaper utility scale solar.
Speaker 2 00:27:09 Well, yeah. I mean, the utilities of private utilities, right. Are are, are the ones who have to pay, they pay low prices for the solar. Right. And then they tack on the transmission and distribution charges, which, which are pretty significant and, and, and all of the other, other costs. Right. But that's where nowadays, that's where they make their money right off of transmission and distribution basically. So Yeah,
Speaker 3 00:27:33 They like to what they, they call rate basing in. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:27:36 So, so I mean, that, that prioritizes far away sources, right. Be because the more transmission you can get funded, the more, presumably, I mean, they won't, they won't make more, but that's how they will satisfy the shareholders, I suppose. Right. Um, yeah. Meanwhile, uh, is there, is there enough roof and parking area in the state to, uh, you know, to make up this requirement? And people go either way. And of course that complicates, uh, the administrative side of things, I suppose. But is there,
Speaker 3 00:28:20 There is a lot of parking lot space. So Los Angeles County alone has 18.6 million parking spaces, which is 101 square miles, um, which could generate up to 44 gigawatts right there, just Los Angeles County's parking spaces. Now, of course, there's not transmission lines to all those parking spaces, so that's why you don't see utility scale projects built out that way. But we do have other options. There's proposals and actually funding, um, from the Department of Energy for virtual power plants where you can aggregate batteries and, and solar across a large area to, um, basically mimic what, uh, a utility scale and solar, I'm sorry, u utility scale solar and storage project might be doing. So there are certainly opportunities there. Uh, France, by the way, has passed a law that requires any parking lot with 80 or more spaces to be covered in solar panels.
Speaker 3 00:29:22 Hmm. So, and that's part of their, you know, federal whatever, whatever their, their energy policy is. So we don't have anything like that. I think their cons, there's been a couple proposals in California legislature to do something similar, but you drive around, you could see it's starting to take place. You're starting to see, um, uh, parking lots covered with solar panels. And that becomes important because it's not necessarily just for the electricity generation and obviously improved siding, but if you think about it, you're gonna have cars underneath those parking lots, and those cars are gonna be electric. So ha you have more opportunities to do like direct charging mm-hmm. <affirmative> less line losses, all that stuff. If you're able to, uh, have more parking lots covered in solar. So in, in a sense, have, you know, committing infrastructures to those parking lots will, um, help the electrification challenge because you don't have to put as much remote stuff out there.
Speaker 3 00:30:21 And, and not, not all. The other piece of that remoteness is that we have a lot of natural gas power plants on along our, the California coast. And the reason they're on is because of resource adequacy needs. You have to have, there's some inertia requirements, so you need to have some spinning stuff, um, local, but you also just need local generation at certain times, um, as well as some other things that, that those power plants can do in terms of, uh, ancillary services and such. So bringing power closer to load helps us as well. It helps us try to shut down some of these natural gas power plants that right now there's no plan to close. In fact, last month we set records for solar generation, uh, on certain days, but we also are seeing an uptick in natural gas generation in the state at the same time.
Speaker 3 00:31:19 And that's partly because of these resource adequacy needs. So essentially the, the geography of what we're building here is not a recipe for shutting down the natural gas power plants. And we need to start thinking a little bit differently about how we build out this stuff because, uh, you'd expect if a, as more solar is delivered to the grid, that we'd end up with less natural gas. But that is not the case because of the, how far away much of that is, is happening. Plus we have bottlenecks in the grid between northern and southern California. So even offshore wind is gonna be trapped down in the southern California bo below the bottleneck. So, um, we need more solar in Northern California, uh, which isn't as profitable as Southern California. Cause you don't have as much sun there. So that's, you know, obviously a challenge too.
Speaker 2 00:32:08 You're listening to sustainability. Now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipitz, and my guest today is Professor Dustin Mulvaney of San Jose State University. We're talking about vast solar farms being built in the southwest deserts of the United States. Okay. Well, I mean, the, the upshot of that is right, is that if you've gotten more locally local solar, right? Locally generated electricity, the, the distribute, the, the, you have to move it less distance mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, uh, and, and this is the, the logic of distributed energy resources and, and as well as rooftop solar, I suppose. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Now the utilities of private utilities seem to be engaging in a war against localized solar, against small scale solar. Um, and can you bring us up to date on that struggle and, and why that's going on? You, I mean, you would think right, that they would be interested in, in, you know, serving these, these distributed sources, right? Because they own the distribution trust system as well, but they seem not to be. What's, what's going on there?
Speaker 3 00:33:25 Well, a lot of the recent debate has been around how to compensate customers that have rooftop solar and, and the utilities do not like rooftop solar for a couple different reasons when they can't actually control or monitor in real time generations. So even the independent system operator's, not something that they, they are a, the one that manages all the California grid, um, is not able to monitor that in real time. So, so there's that element, but really what it, the, the core controversy is around the net metering compensation. So should, so historically to encourage solar, you might remember, we always talk about spinning the meter backwards, right? From, from to balance what you generate and what you take off at nighttime when, when there's nothing there. And what spinning the meter backwards really means is being compensated at the retail rate. Right. And that's what the controversy is, is whether or not, um, there's a cost shift onto other customers when you're compensating solar customers at the retail rate. And then you suddenly have a lot of customers that you're compensating at that rate. So there's been a pushback by the utilities, uh, and it's been a pretty severe pushback to try to get it to be closer to the, the wholesale rate that they pay for electricity. And just in California, we're talking about like 20 cents a kilowatt hour for retail and maybe 5 cents a kilowatt hour for, for wholesale mm-hmm. <affirmative>.
Speaker 2 00:34:58 Um, but, but you know, there's also the utilities, uh, are also, it seems to me, or it seems to some basically fighting what you might call what microgrids, right? I mean, locally, local solar generation systems, um, at least microgrids that they don't control.
Speaker 3 00:35:19 Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:35:20 And that,
Speaker 3 00:35:21 That does seem to be the case too.
Speaker 2 00:35:23 Why? Well, why,
Speaker 3 00:35:25 Well, they say it's for safety because they, when they send their people out there, oh, that's one reason they say, they say it's for safety reasons, because they wanna make sure that they know when something's de-energized and not de-energized. And obviously, uh, there's the potential for a smart grid to still be putting power on, on lines if it's connected to the grid, um, when the rest of the, the grid is down. But
Speaker 2 00:35:50 Presumably though, I mean, you know, you could put shutoffs in, right? I mean, this for sure. This is not, this is not rocket science, right?
Speaker 3 00:35:58 Yeah. So I mean, there's a recent C P C ruling that I think is gonna help people who are advocating for more resilient, uh, microgrids. Um, you know, obviously we have also this issue where it's been raining a lot this year, but in previous years we've had a lot of, uh, power safety shutoffs because of the wildfire risk. And that again, kind of talk speaks to that issue of like, how far away is the power that's, uh, being delivered to, to the site. Um, but the, the recent ruling basically said that that, um, that there needs to, that, that the utilities do need to start investing more in, um, have more programs for disaster vulnerable communities, as well as low income communities that ha that experience large portions of the, the shutoffs that we, we have today. So, so the, the, despite the, the utilities best efforts to try to push back on microgrids, I think the fact that they can't keep the lights on in certain areas and they leave certain customers very vulnerable frequently, um, is gonna force them to have, have to, to deal with a, a, a new business model to, to make it more accepting to them.
Speaker 3 00:37:10 I mean, they're worried about grid defection, they're worried about losing customers. Um, there's, there's all those elements. Um, they're, you know, they like to characterize people who are not paying for the upkeep of the grid as freeloaders. And, and that's not necessarily accurate either. Um, even with the cost ship argument, they, there's tends to be an argument that it's cost, it, it, it's increasing the cost to low income customers. And, you know, if people were serious about concern about low income customers, then we have special rates for them. And if we wanna advocate making those rates lower or, or increasing the proportion of people who fall under those rates, that that's where you wanna put your, your EM effort if you're interested in low income.
Speaker 2 00:37:55 I, I, I wanna come back to that, but if we have time, I want to come back to that because, just, just as a note, right? There's, there's a struggle going on, uh, because the legislature is requiring the imposition of fixed charges on customers that will cover all of those public programs, right? That, that mm-hmm. <affirmative> are tacked onto utility bills. And I'd like to come back to that later if we have time. But, but before that, in recently, you and Professor Hillary Angelo of U C S C sociology department we're interviewed by Alec Baldwin about the solar land rush and its impact on Nye County, Nevada. And I wonder if you could sort of tell us, first of all, uh, did you get any kinds of thrill talking to Alec Baldwin and, you know, what kind, what was the work that you were doing? Um, because I know Hillary was, has been doing research out there, and you somehow got involved in that. Maybe you can tell us about that <laugh>.
Speaker 3 00:38:52 Yeah, that was pretty funny. I felt like I was being interviewed by Donald Trump <laugh> because of the, the Saturday Night Live, uh, character there. Um, so, and you know, I wasn't sure that, that that interview was actually gonna take place given, given the circumstances of, um, anyhow, so, but, but that was, that was, um, it was fun. It was a really fun, I, I felt like he asked better questions than a lot of the folks that I've been interviewed on this. He, I think he had a good understanding of, I, I like how there's a tendency for the public discourse to be saying, people who are against renewables are nimby. They don't want this in their backyard, and not in my backyard is what NIMBY stands for. And, uh, I, I love that he started off that conversation by saying, we're gonna put that aside because I think of NIMBYs as like wealthy people who are able to kind of legally get out of having to deal with, with those infrastructures.
Speaker 3 00:39:47 And, and he was really engaged with the issues. He seemed to demonstrate some, um, knowledge of deserts and, um, rural communities and, and their dynamics. And, and that was a, a really fun one. That was an area that I, I, I spent some time doing research out there in 2009, 2010, 2011, because even back in the first solar land rush, which were, which preceded right before the American Recovery Reinvestment Act money was being dished out through loan programs and grant programs, there was a, a large number of solar companies, uh, developers proposing projects all the way from the arm, Armagosa Valley, which is in, in Nevada, along, um, the eastern side of Death Valley National Parks, all the way up to, to beading, which is what the topic that Alec was interested in. Uh, so if you actually look at maps, there's, the whole area is just covered in solar farms, the whole, all those valleys.
Speaker 3 00:40:46 So, um, now in 2009, those projects were too far from transmission, so they were never developed. But what's going on today is there's a proposed, uh, transmission line to connect essentially Las Vegas to Reno, Nevada, and that's called the Green Link Transmission line. And just like I had mentioned earlier, the, the value to a solar developer on, or, or the Why Solar Farms end up where they are is because of that cheap access to transmission. So when you build a new transmission line across a lot of public lands, you're suddenly opening up a whole bunch of new lands that are very valuable to developers. So that's what's going on today, is now there's a transmission line going through the same area where we saw lots of proposed development 10 years ago, but nothing went through. Everybody withdrew those projects, or some of them sold them the other developers.
Speaker 3 00:41:43 That's a whole nother side story. But, um, that transmission line now is going to invite a whole bunch of, of new development. And, you know, someone far away might say, oh, that's great. That's exactly what transmission lines are supposed to do. They're supposed to bring on more renewables. But in this particular case, you're moving a transmission line through an area that is again, you know, been relatively undeveloped in that area, with the exception of pockets of extractive industry activities over the years. And, and now we're, we're seeing this inevitable conflict between solar development and conservation, again, because of the, the presence of this proposed transmission line, the green link transmission line.
Speaker 2 00:42:27 Well, I, you know, the, the one question is, what's the benefit of a, if this is federal land, right? What is the benefit to the people living in that area of solar development? Is it because the solar farms would be on private land, or is it, what,
Speaker 3 00:42:47 What's a mix?
Speaker 2 00:42:48 Why, why are they interested in it?
Speaker 3 00:42:54 Why is who interested in the developers? No,
Speaker 2 00:42:55 No, no. The people living there. I mean, when you talk about, you know, the, the article that, that Hillary wrote, um, was about partly about that, right? People, it's, it's kind of like, you know, oil in your backyard, right? Or, or, uh, so what, what's the, what's the incentive
Speaker 3 00:43:15 In
Speaker 2 00:43:15 This case?
Speaker 3 00:43:17 Well, there on public lands, there's not much incentive for the local communities cause they don't get much of that revenue. They get maybe a little activity around the construction, um, time where there's more workers, uh, on, in the area. But, um, you know, some rural communities, not this one in particular, some like San Bernard, Bernardino County or Riverside County, they like to see public lands develop for solar because that means that it, they don't lose the opportunity to develop other things on their private lands. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So there's always letters from, you know, the, the, the board of supervisors from, you know, so-and-so county saying, we wanna see development of public lands, because otherwise it'll come onto the private lands. And then that means we, I see we're foregoing development opportunity. I see. Um-huh. Now, if it's on private lands, there are some benefits to the community.
Speaker 3 00:44:09 So you generate sales tax, for example. That's probably the biggest one. If you have a really big solar farm, you're gonna be generating local sales tax that will help pay for whatever things communities need paid for. So, so there is that. But, um, you know, in large it seems that people in that that BD area that Alec was asking about are largely opposed to the solar farm because they, they see tourism and being the gateway to Na, death Valley National Park as their really only future at this point. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, they, they don't, and they see that being marred by the presence of extensive fields of solar and, and that, you know, that tourism will then shift in, into Death Valley solely and not be, uh, also kind of had that spillover effect it has today where people, you know, are gonna stop in BD or, um, you know, eat in BD on their way in, they might just keep driving through because it's not the landscape that they were, uh, expecting to see.
Speaker 2 00:45:08 Yeah, yeah. This transmission line you mentioned between Las Vegas and Reno, uh, is it being built explicitly for solar development or is there something, you know, are there other, uh, reasons for building that particular line?
Speaker 3 00:45:25 Well, I think it's part of NV Energy's plan, and it's not completely clear what the, the full suite of, of technologies that will be deployed on, on that. Are it, the case is being made that it is to help bring solar power, for example, up to Northern Nevada, um, and maybe eventually over the Sierra Crest into California, which again, that could be a challenge for California to get power, so that, that might be the, the route, although that's not the current plan, that that's a potential future plan. So it's not clear. I mean, one of the things that we're seeing, I just saw for example, uh, adjacent to a solar energy zone. A solar energy zones are, so when they, the B L M opened up those 22 million acres in 2005, they eventually went through a programmatic environmental impact statement, which identified solar energy zones.
Speaker 3 00:46:21 And these would be low conflict, potentially low conflict or lower conflict, because they still are, you know, public lands, um, lands for development. In fact, you only need an environmental assessment to, to do that. So, um, in one of these solar energy zones in Nevada, they just approved a natural gas power plant literally adjacent to the solar energy zone, which to me says that we quite don't, again, we don't have a plan for how to shut off the natural gas, uh, for electricity generation right now, because if we're proposing a new natural gas, and it wasn't just proposed, it was approved, um, you know, when is that thing gonna shut down? Or is it, has it 10 year life, 20 year life, 30 year life? Like what's the plan for shutting off the natural gas? So, um, and that electricity could very well be moving along the green link mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, so the green link corridor. So, so not, not completely clear, but the, the intent I think is that it would be low carbon, but not, not completely clear. If we don't have a, if we're still approving natural gas power plants in Nevada, then that suggests that, um, maybe a a hundred percent renewables is, is not really the vision there, but
Speaker 2 00:47:35 Yeah. Yeah. You're listening to sustainability now. I'm your host Ronnie Lipchitz, and my guest today is Professor Dustin Mulvaney of San Jose State University. We're talking about vast solar farms being built in the southwest deserts of the United States. All right. Well, we're getting close to the end of the show. And, and I mentioned earlier the, uh, the proposal to in impose income-based, this is the, the catch income-based fixed charges on customers. Can you explain what that's all about?
Speaker 3 00:48:11 Well, so fixed charges, essentially, so usually we think of our electricity bill as paying for the kilowatt hours that we, we receive. That's historically how we've gotten electricity bill, you know, to your bill, but reflects how much use you have. But over time, we've slowly crept fixed charges into the bill. So if you look at your electricity bill, you'll see like a large portion is for the electricity you use, but like a certain part is a fixed fee for, and, and the justification for that would be something like, oh, to help pay for the distribution costs or, so there's been a, an effort to kind of separate out all these costs. And, and the challenge there is that as you add more fixed cost, then the value to the customer of reducing their energy use goes, goes down. Because now, you know, if you're, if you're a bill, bill was totally based on your energy and you cut your energy use in half, your bill would be cut in half.
Speaker 3 00:49:09 But now if like your energy use is only 50% of your bill and the half is fixed charges, and you cut your energy use in half, you know, it's a much smaller savings, meaning that, that, that cascades into people's logic and whether to invest in solar, rooftop solar or invest in energy efficiency. So, so fixed charges in general, um, seem to be very popular now with utilities because it helps with their accounting. But in, in many ways, it's, it's a known, it's known to send, um, the wrong signals for conservation efficiency and, and solar development. Now, the reason I think that they're proposing these income-based fixed charges is that, you know, as you get to lower, lower incomes, those fixed charges start to become a larger portion of the bill. So it's, I think it's an effort to kind of bring that down a little bit more so that it's less imposition on those lower income customers. And, and also there's a penalty for people who have high, high incomes. So those folks with the higher incomes will be, um, paying a larger portion of those fixed charges.
Speaker 2 00:50:21 Well, the argument, well, I mean, I've been, I've been watching these arguments, uh, over particular list serves that I subscribe to. Right. And, um, of course people are outraged on, on the lister for outraged because they're generally high income. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, you know, those people in California. Um, but there's also this kind of talk about defection that if the costs get to be high, high enough that the incentive to ghost to solar and batteries and simply, you know, disconnect from the, from the grid start to become stronger and stronger. Um, how serious is this, this, uh, argument about what we're calling defection from the grid? I mean, how big a problem do you see that as, as becoming,
Speaker 3 00:51:07 It seemed a little more of an issue, uh, a few years ago? Um, I do think there's more. So in some ways, I think there's more impetus for grid defection now because of the power of safety shutoffs. So people are, in general, the, the disruption of having power shut off seems to be a, a a little bit bigger of a driver for, for why people would want to, to defect from, from the grid. But the grid's there, I mean, it, it's right there. It's sometimes, um, can be costly if, if not, um, difficult to, to disconnect. Um, it's hard to perhaps sell a house that might be disconnected from the grid without having some disclosure that scares any potential buyers away. So while I think that there's a ton of opportunity there, it's what we're doing today, I think is not enough to push people far, far off the grid and pe what people are gonna start doing is just having batteries and, and solar and trying to keep as much kind of off of the grid as possible, but, but remain connected. But, you know, it's, it's an interesting question. I it maybe it does get more effort over, over time to, to see more people doing that, but I'm, I'm not sure that that's happening as much as we thought it was a couple years ago. Well,
Speaker 2 00:52:30 The
Speaker 3 00:52:31 Utility utility death spiral is another example. Yeah. Yeah. It's a phrase we don't hear as much anymore.
Speaker 2 00:52:36 Although I imagine it's the cost of the retail cost of electricity continues to rise. Right. And the utilities are gonna be seeking rate increases to build, to repair the system that they ignored for so long. Right. And to build new transmission mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the, the projected retail prices of electricity are gonna be quite high compared to just generating it yourself. So,
Speaker 3 00:53:01 Yeah. So, but I think, but so I guess what I'm saying is that as opposed to grid defection, people could use their batteries for arbitrage. Right? And, and that's, that's how they will get around instead of chopping the wire and saying, I'm gonna keep my battery and solar on this side, they're gonna, they're gonna charge the battery when it's cheap and then dump the battery on the grid when it, when the value is high. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So, and that might not correspond to the best greenhouse gas use, by the way. And that's, that's a, a challenge. We've, there's some studies that show like battery arbitrage increases greenhouse gas emissions and things like that mm-hmm. <affirmative> so you, you're sending the wrong, wrong signals. But I think those customers that we would have called grid defectors a few years ago are more battery arbitrages, uhhuh, <affirmative>, um, because cuz that would allow them to, to stay connected and not have to do all the, the difficult work of actually disconnecting your house from the grid and operate within the confines of the way that the utility system operates today. If that makes sense. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:53:59 And get, and get paid when the, when the wholesale price is high because demand is high, you know? No, I, yeah, it makes a great deal of sense. But, um, I guess we'll see what happens. Huh. Is there anything else that, that you want to mention that we haven't covered? We haven't covered a lot, but
Speaker 3 00:54:16 No, that's, that's great. Um, you know, I'll just mention a a another thing that I think that is, is interesting and important to the sustainability and environmental justice issues in the solar industry, which is, um, the situation in Xinjiang, which is Northwestern China. So with the, the build out of China's solar capacity, starting particularly around 2016, actually let me step back a second. I mentioned that there was, there's been an ongoing solar trade war, um, between the US and China. And, and even Europe's been involved and us put tariffs on solar panels coming from China around 2012 or so. And then the chi China responded by putting tariffs on the poly silicon that we were selling to China to make the solar panels that would get shipped back here. So what that did was that facilitated China building out its poly silicon industry quite significantly, you know, somewhere on the order 90% of global PolySci or 80% of global poly silicon is, is made in China.
Speaker 3 00:55:22 And in Xinjiang specifically about 45% of the global supply of PolySci, which is the raw material needed to make these crystal and silicon solar panels are, is made there. And in recent years, there have been accusations that there's slave labor, forced labor, um, reeducation camps, and the poly silicon supply chain has been enrolled in that debate. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, to the extent that even the Biden administration, um, pa uh, put into place, uh, a prohibition on imports, unless you could document where that PV comes from. So, uh, meaning that at some, at one point there was almost a billion dollars worth of solar panels that either had been rejected and sent back, or were building up in the, the port of Long Beach, um, in Los Angeles down there. So that's all to say that, um, you know, I think it's really important also for us to be thinking kind of upstream, um, those shink uh, PolySci facilities also making metal silicone, which is the precursor to that, um, are all built around or many, many of them are built around coal-fired industrial parks.
Speaker 3 00:56:31 Mm-hmm. <affirmative> not even connected to the grid. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. So that makes the carbon intensity of those PV modules much, much higher. So we've developed a, um, uh, the, what's called the, the ultra low carbon standard, which is meant to, to kind of seek out the lowest carbon source of polys silicon. Poly silicon is projected to actually have a gr higher greenhouse gas, um, impact than aluminum production by Wow. By 2045 or so. So this is a pretty serious energy intensive issue that we want to get ahold of early on. But, you know, as I wrote in my solar power book, uh, we tend to give a green halo to the solar industries and, and let them, um, you know, manage their own issues themselves without much environmental advocacy or social justice advocacy. And I think it's really important to address both the coalfire power issue, but also the, you know, it's critical to the human rights violations that are associated with it. And now embodied in the poly silicon, it's more than 45% by the way. Cause there's a spot market for PolySci, and that means that some polys silicons melted with other PolySci. So some think as much as like 80% of PolySci could be contaminated with embodied forced labor, if that's seems to be, um, you know, very troubling, troubling development that we didn't see coming. Yeah. 10 years ago. I was pretty shocked to see that come up, but I thought that's worth mentioning in the context of sustainability and environmental justice for this industry.
Speaker 2 00:58:03 Well, Justin, we're out of time and I want to thank you very much for returning to sustainability now and, uh, telling us all about these very interesting topics.
Speaker 3 00:58:14 Thanks for having me again.
Speaker 2 00:58:16 So thanks for listening and thanks to all the staff and volunteers who make Case Goodyear Community Radio station and keep it going. And so until next, every other Sunday, sustainability now
Speaker 1 00:58:36 Good planets, a hot zones and tropic climbs
Speaker 0 00:58:43 Not
Speaker 1 00:58:43 Through currents and thriving sea wind blowing some freezing trees and strong on and save sunshine. Good planets are hard to find.
