Two-thirds of the project site will be repopulated with tortoises. It also straddles a connectivity corridor that could help the reptiles seek safer haven as hotter weather and more extreme droughts make their current homes increasingly unlivable.īefore Primergy started building, the company scoured the site and removed 167 tortoises, with plans to let them return and live among the solar panels once the heavy lifting is over. Scientists consider much of the Primergy site high-quality tortoise habitat. Fish and Wildlife Service has estimated tortoise populations fell by more than one-third between 20. The key questions are: How many big solar farms are needed, and where should they be built? Can they be engineered to coexist with animals and plants?ĭesert tortoises are sensitive to global warming, residential sprawl and other human encroachment on their habitat. Some habitat destruction is unavoidable - at least if we want to break our fossil fuel addiction. On a chilly winter morning before sunrise, they prepared for the day ahead - laying out steel rails, hooking up microinverters and loading panels onto powder-blue trucks.īut even if Sunrun’s business continues to grow, it won’t eliminate the need for large solar farms in the desert. The company has enough work in the state to support a dozen crews, each named for a different casino. Today, Troncoso is Nevada branch manager for Sunrun, the nation’s largest rooftop solar installer.
Installations now exceed pre-2015 levels. Since then, NV Energy and the rooftop solar industry have maintained an uneasy political ceasefire. The rooftop installer abruptly ceased operations in the Silver State after NV Energy helped persuade officials to slash a program that pays solar customers for energy they send to the power grid.Īfter a public outcry, Nevada lawmakers partly reversed the reductions to rooftop solar incentives. 23, 2015, and he was working for SolarCity. Mike Troncoso remembers the exact date of Nevada’s rooftop solar reckoning.
And in many cases, they’ve fought to limit rooftop solar - which can reduce the need for large-scale infrastructure and result in lower returns for investors. NV Energy and its investor-owned utility brethren across the country can earn huge amounts of money paving over public lands with solar and wind farms and building long-distance transmission lines to cities.īut by regulatory design, those companies don’t profit off rooftop solar. The so-called Oracle of Omaha owns NV Energy, the monopoly utility that supplies electricity to most Nevadans. The outcome could be determined, in part, by billionaire investor Warren Buffett. And Nevada is ground zero for figuring it out. Even an analysis funded by rooftop solar advocates and installers found that the most cost-effective route to phasing out fossil fuels involves six times more power from big solar and wind farms than from smaller local solar systems.īut the exact balance has yet to be determined. electricity - especially as more people drive electric cars. Researchers have found there’s not nearly enough space on rooftops to supply all U.S. They could also lessen the death and suffering from the worsening heat waves, fires, droughts and storms of the climate crisis. Those energy generators could imperil rare plants and slow-footed tortoises already threatened by rising temperatures. The Biden administration has fueled that growth, taking steps to encourage solar and wind energy development across vast stretches of public lands in Nevada and other Western states. There’s enormous opportunity to lower household utility bills and cut climate pollution - without damaging wildlife habitat or disrupting treasured landscapes.īut that hasn’t stopped corporations from making plans to carpet the desert surrounding Las Vegas with dozens of giant solar fields - some of them designed to supply power to California. Chen, Maggie Beidelman / Los Angeles Times) But what is the environmental cost? (Video by Jessica Q. Times energy reporter Sammy Roth heads to the Las Vegas Valley, where giant solar fields are beginning to carpet the desert.
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