BrightSource

No Free Lunch In The Desert

A tough, heartbreaking story from the Los Angeles Times about the painful choices environmentalists are faced with in combatting climate change. The issue is BrightSource Energy’s Ivanpah solar power project, a massive, 6-square-mile city of 173,500 mirrors that will scar much of California’s desert beyond recognition. This was a hard compromise, reports Julie Cart, as “the …

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Of Commerce and Green Evangelism

In 1998, then-Congressman Henry Hyde famously tried to write off an extramarital affair at age 41 as “youthful indiscretion”. I am wondering if President Obama’s Commerce Secretary nominee John Bryson is tempted to use that phrase to explain his long-ago involvement in helping to create the Natural Resources Defense Council. Not that he has anything …

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DOE Bets on Central Station Solar — Is It the Right Horse?

Congratulations to Oakland’s BrightSource Energy Inc. for winning the largest federal loan guarantee for a renewable energy project thus far — $1.37 billion for the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, to be constructed in the Mojave Desert. For an observer like me – one who is most definitely not a financial markets expert – the …

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