‘Financial Boondoggle’: Billion-Dollar Ivanpah Solar ‘Disaster’ To Shut Down After Years Of Failure by Aubrie Spady
“A major solar power plant project was granted over a billion dollars in federal loans is on the road to closure, with energy experts blasting the project as a “boondoggle” that harmed the environment
‘Financial Boondoggle’: Billion-Dollar Ivanpah Solar ‘Disaster’ To Shut Down After Years Of Failure
by Aubrie Spady
in Energy, News and Opinion, Politics
Reading Time: 3 mins read
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A major solar power plant project that was granted over a billion dollars in federal loans is on the road to closure, with energy experts blasting the project as a “boondoggle” that harmed the environment. [emphasis, links added]
In 2011, the US Department of Energy (DOE) under former President Barack Obama issued $1.6 billion in loan guarantees to finance the Ivanpah Solar Power Facility, a green energy project that consists of three solar concentrating thermal power plants in California.
The facility was touted by then-Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz as an “example of how America is becoming a world leader in solar energy.”
But after 10 years, the federally funded plant is now on track to close.
“Ivanpah is yet another failed green energy boondoggle, much like Solyndra,” Jason Isaac, CEO of the American Energy Institute, an American energy advocacy group, told Fox News Digital in a statement.
“Despite receiving $1.6 billion in federal loan guarantees, it never lived up to its promises, producing less electricity than expected while still relying on natural gas to stay operational.”
“Now, with its power contracts canceled, Ivanpah stands as a testament to the waste and inefficiency of government-subsidized energy schemes,” Isaac said.
Ivanpah consists of three units, two of which were contracted by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) in 2009 and scheduled to run until 2039.
In January, PG&E announced plans to cancel its agreement with Ivanpah 14 years early, determining that “ending the agreements at this time will save customers money compared to the cost of keeping them through 2039” – ultimately putting Ivanpah on notice for closure.
“The Ivanpah plant was a financial boondoggle and environmental disaster,” Julia Dowell of the Sierra Club, an environmental activism group, said of the power plant.
“Along with killing thousands of birds and tortoises, the project’s construction destroyed irreplaceable pristine desert habitat along with numerous rare plant species,” Dowell said.
“While the Sierra Club strongly supports innovative clean energy solutions and recognizes the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels, Ivanpah demonstrated that not all renewable technologies are created equal.”
This comes after another DOE-funded green energy project, Solyndra, went bankrupt in 2011 after receiving $535 million in federal loan guarantees from the Obama administration.
“Green projects have a long history of expensive taxpayer-subsidized disaster that is getting more so,” Steve Milloy, senior fellow at the Energy & Environmental Legal Institute and former Trump EPA transition team member, said in a statement to Fox.
Milloy suggested that further green energy failures could result from projects funded by recent Democrat-backed legislation aimed at pushing the green energy agenda.
Read rest at NY Post
The green scam needs tax subsidies is not reliant nor environmentally friendly….
I wasn't aware that the project development team supported abandoning the technology back in 2012!
..."But other employees at BrightSource realized that PV was leaving them in the dust. They predicted that even lower-cost, next-generation CSP would lose to PV because the Chinese manufacturing boom was driving down the cost of crystalline silicon cells so dramatically. The costs of BrightSource’s technology was dropping from around $5 per watt to below $4, while PV was nearing $2.50 and dropping fast, Woolard said. It was a dynamic that made it difficult to secure new power purchase agreements or follow through on existing contracts.
So in 2012, their development team proposed an alternative path: repurpose their existing land and power purchase agreements for PV...."
Those power purchase agreements had very favorable time of delivery factors! Pity they didn't get renegotiated.
https://www.latitudemedia.com/news/a-former-concentrated-solar-ceo-on-why-the-industry-failed-to-launch/