The comment period for the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) is drawing to a close. The DRECP will be the guiding document for renewable energy in the California desert for many years. It aims to streamline utility-scale renewable energy projects on more than 2 million acres of California desert, while purporting to contain a conservation aspect. But “utility scale” and “conservation” don’t go together. Unfortunately, …
San Bernardino County Seeks Comment on DRECP Response
San Bernardino County has drafted its response to the Draft Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP), and is now seeking public comment on the positions it proposes to take. County residents will have the opportunity to speak out about those positions in a special public meeting on Tuesday, February 10, 2015, at 2 p.m. in the Board of Supervisors Covington Chambers in San Bernardino. Once …
DRECP Has Potentially Fatal Flaws—
A4DP Seeks Corrections
The Alliance for Desert Preservation has submitted a comment to the Desert Renewable Energy Conservation Plan (DRECP) calling attention to two serious defects in the plan that could render the entire Draft DRECP voidable. The first is the fact that there is a hidden landmine in the DRECP. On its face, the DRECP would apply to a 22.5-million-acre zone, specifically mapped and carefully delineated in …
VIDEO: In the Name of Green
Poet Cyrus Hadavi, an Alliance for Desert Preservation member, shares a portion of his poem “The Wind and the Sun.” The powerful poem contrasts the genuine force of sun and wind with the hypocrisy of destroying the desert to implement industrial-scale energy projects.
Light Or Blight?
Summit to Explore Mojave Energy Options
Light or Blight—Renewable Energy in the Mojave is the theme for a community forum to be held Thursday, January 22, 2015, 5–8:30 p.m. at the Victor Valley Museum in Apple Valley. The forum will include a roundtable discussion about the environmental impact of renewable energy projects in the desert with such experts as Peter McRae of Quattro Environmental and UC Riverside biology professor Michael Allen. …
Sign A4DP’s Petition to Stop Coolwater-Lugo
Join the Alliance for Desert Preservation in opposing the Coolwater-Lugo Transmission Project! Click here to send a letter to our public officials. Sign our online petition here. Southern California Edison continues to push this $1 billion project that would bring massive, industrial-scale energy developments to the High Mojave Desert. It would impose 63 miles of new high-voltage transmission lines on the High Desert and a …
VIDEO: Rooftop Solar for a Clean Energy Future
This heartening video from the California Desert Coalition shows that even large solar firms such as NRG rcognize that rooftop solar is the superior alternative to destructive utility-scale development of the Mojave Desert.
Juniper Flats: To Save It Is to Love It
The following article appears in the December 2014 edition of Desert Report, published by the Sierra Club California/Nevada Desert Committee. The author, Robert Earle Howells (Bob Howells), is a board member of the Alliance for Desert Preservation and a contributor to National Geographic Books. Click here to read the full edition of Desert Report, which also contains an excellent article about the DRECP called “The …
A4DP: Preserve Juniper Flats!
View PostRooftop Solar Can Save the Desert from the DRECP
Distributed generation (DG), such as rooftop solar, can effectively generate at least the amount of energy (20,000 MW) that the Desert Renewable Energy Plan (DRECP) is calling for. The difference: Distributed generation does not require wholesale destruction of the California desert. The DRECP, as currently drafted, does. Worse, the DRECP virtually ignores DG, and the DRECP document and its participating agencies seem to have no …