In exciting news for the alternative energy industry, Brightsource Energy, a solar thermal power plant maker, signed a deal with California last week to construct a series of seven installations in the California Mojave Desert. Upon completion, the project will generate more than 1,300 megawatts of power, which would be enough energy to power a city the size of San Francisco. You can read about the deal here. The deal will be the largest solar installation in history, and is a great sign that states are actively pursuing clean energy alternatives. This follows a plan enacted in November of last year by Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, which pledged development of 1.3 gigawatts of solar power to be in use by 2020 (which will power 10% of L.A.), so there has been good news all around with solar energy and California lately.

To give a brief overview of solar thermal energy, it is different from solar photovoltaics cells in that mirrors are used to reflect the suns rays to a central tower that then uses that heat generated to create steam in a boiler which in turn spins a turbine, which generates electricity. Solar thermal energy has been used in various forms since 600 b.c. and there is an interesting history of its use here.

The only downside to solar thermal plants is that they take up massive amounts of land (the Brightsource project will span over 10,000 acres in the Mojave) and therefore are only viable in areas where there is enough sun and space to make them work (which for the U.S. is mostly in the Southwest). Additionally, since there these plants require such a large amount of land they will be invariably located some distance from major cities. This will require the U.S. to upgrade its energy infrastructure to transport the newly generated electricity long distances to the cities without losing some of the power in the process. However, thanks to the The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which will be signed into law on Tuesday, there is $4.5 billion appropriated to modernize the nations electricity grid in order to "enhance reliability of the energy infrastructure" (its on pg. 60 of the report if you are interested enough to read through it), so hopefully that should put a major dent in that problem. Unfortunately there also is a provision in there for $3.4 billion for "fossil fuel research and development" as well (see pg 62 of the bill). So its a bit of a mixed bag for environmentalists. Basically, it has a lot of funding for electric infrastructure development, some for environmental cleanup (around $800 million), grants for development of hybrid electric car batteries ($2 billion) and is too heavy on the fossil fuel research and development. Although our country will have to ease itself off of fossil fuel, climatologists feel that it is urgent that we get there sooner than later, and although this bill will help, we shall see if it fast enough. Curbing global warming will require us to decrease emissions more quickly than anything in this bill could provide for. Next post will be discussing where we currently stand with global warming and greenhouse gas emissions, as well as possible solutions for restructuring our country to try and meet this challenge.

Sphere: Related Content Labels: ARRA Act, solar energy, solar thermal