The California Energy Commission has turned down a request from the Sierra Club to become a formal legal party to proceedings regarding the proposed Palen Solar Electric Generating System west of Blythe in Riverside County.
The 500 megawatt Palen project would build two 750-foot solar power towers on 3,800 acres of land southeast of Joshua Tree National Park. Those power towers would be surrounded by tens of thousands of movable mirrors called “heliostats” that would focus solar energy on boilers atop the towers.
In addition to the new evidence on wildlife mortality, the CEC ordered when reopening the evidentiary record that the new hearings consider the new topics of glint and glare, solar flux damage to insects, and heightened use of natural gas by the Palen project (likely based on similar increases at Ivanpah.
While environmental intervenors Basin and Range Watch, the Center For Biological Diversity, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes have given important testimony on solar flux and a whole raft of other issues, and the expertise in those groups is top-notch, the Sierra Club simply has far more resources than the other two groups, and could have brought a new level of expert witnesses to the table.