Word: solarization
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...White House. The Obamas' new kitchen garden echoes the victory garden planted by Eleanor Roosevelt during WW II. F.D.R. made a cloakroom into a movie theater and put in an indoor swimming pool. Nixon, an avid bowler, added a one-lane alley. Eco-friendly Jimmy Carter installed solar panels on the roof in 1979, only to have Ronald Reagan remove them in 1986--proof that even First Families can't go home again...
...while, America will be in a state of ideological flux - which means we'll be unusually free to improvise a fresh course forward. We can have universal health coverage and public schools unbound from the stultifying grip of teachers' unions. We can tax fossil fuels so that solar and wind become more economical and commit seriously to nuclear power. We can impose sensible regulatory mechanisms and enthusiastically promote free markets and free trade. We can grow the armed forces to fight all necessary wars but also forgo pork-barrel weapons systems...
This isn't the first time solar has been proposed for the plains, however. Darrell Twisselman - whose family has lived in the area since the 1880s and whose land would host the two photovoltaic plants for a hefty profit - remembers when they built a solar photovoltaic plant there in the mid-1980s. (At 6 megawatts, it was tiny compared with the current proposals, one of which has a 177-megawatt capacity.) The project faced similar gripes then. "Everyone complained about them for two weeks, and then everyone forgot," Twisselman says. "And they were what you might say unsightly. You could...
Despite the earlier Carrisa solar experiment, the state feels it is still inexperienced in judging the impact of huge solar plants. According to California Energy Commission chairwoman Karen Douglas, "We've got much more experience siting natural-gas plants than siting renewables, both from a staff and commission perspective. So some issues are rising up in the renewables case that are substantively different than what has been the core of the siting work before the solar applications started coming in so quickly...
...state agencies to streamline the process with an eye on speed (and the federal deadline) as well as the environment. But this process, which included a workshop held last week, is still in the early stages and is focused mainly on the Mojave and Colorado deserts, where other future solar plants would go. As such, it remains unclear how this process will affect the Carrisa Plains, especially with the pressure building for the 2010 deadline...