What some have billed as the world’s largest solar project in the Mojave came under fire again today. This time a baby desert tortoise led the charge with a cohort of environmentalists. While the tortoise provided a slow-motion picket around downtown Oakland, protestors lined up in front of BrightSource Energy’s corporate headquarters, determined to preserve the Mojave desert and keep solar projects local.

A baby desert tortoise stakes out a position outside BrightSource Energy headquarters in Oakland. (Photo: Chris Penalosa)

At risk of habitat loss from the project, the tortoise is becoming the iconic image for preservation of the Mojave. The Bureau of Land Management put the brakes on two-thirds of the Ivanpah solar farm when field biologists found more tortoises than initially expected. Tortoises found on site are being relocated and fenced off, preventing their gradual return.

Karen Rusiniack, member of the Oakland non-profit preservation group Desert Survivors, claims that relocation of the animals presents risks of its own. “Think about it,” she said. “These are creatures that have very limited resources in the desert. They are set up in their little burrows, they know where their little supermarket is, where they can go and get plants, they make little depressions in the landscape to get their water. They’re at home in their land.”

Activists in front of BrightSource Energy headquarters also targeted Google, which is investing more than $160 million in BrightSource. (Photo: Chris Penalosa)

Two segments of the Ivanpah solar farm are on hold until the federal Fish and Wildlife Service issues a plan for relocating the tortoises. Despite the controversy, BrightSource maintains that the project will finish on schedule in 2013.

The federal Bureau of Land Management today issued its first approvals of major solar energy projects in California.

The Tessera project will use "SunCatchers" to concentrate solar power. (Image: Tessera Solar)

Tessera Energy’s 700-megawatt Ocotillo project, located in the Imperial Valley, about 100 miles east of San Diego, and a smaller photovoltaic (PV) project by San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., are both cleared to go forward.

The two projects set a precedent not just for California. On a call with reporters this morning, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called it a “historic day,” saying the two projects “bear the distinction of being the first large-scale solar energy projects ever approved for construction on our nation’s public lands.”

For projects being developed on federal land, BLM approval is the final hurdle before construction can begin. Big solar-thermal projects, which concentrate the Sun’s energy to make steam, also require approval from the California Energy Commission (photovoltaic projects, like the Chevron array, are under the eyes of the state’s Pubic Utilities Commission and county governments). State energy commissioners have approved seven major solar installations in the California desert since July. Several of these are still pending BLM approval.

BLM director Robert Abbey uses the catch phrase “smart from the start” to describe his agency’s new approach to site permitting, which he calls “streamlined without cutting corners.” Abbey says the Bureau is still sifting through a backlog of 180 pending applications, nationwide.  He said his agency manages about 23 million acres “with solar potential,” across several western states, about half of that in California.

The Tessera project, shown in some CEC filings as SES Solar Two, could deliver more than 700 megawatts of solar-thermal power when completed late next year. It will occupy more than 6,000 acres of BLM land, and a few hundred acres of adjacent private land. Chevron’s Lucerne Valley project is significantly smaller, rated at 45 megawatts, with a footprint of about 400 acres in the Lucerne Valley of San Bernardino County.

Asked about opposition from environmentalists, Salazar said the projects had won support from several major organizations, including Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In a press release, NRDC attorney Johanna Wald wrote that: “the process provided valuable lessons that careful planning, siting and designing up front will lead to renewable projects that are smart from the start.”

Salazar told reporters that transmission lines are already available for all of the Chevron project’s output and a little less than half the expected output from Ocotillo, and that he looks forward to seeing “thousands of megawatts of renewable energy sprouting” over the next few years.

But one of the thornier realities of utility-scale solar is that it has its own footprint. In fact, in terms of the sheer real estate that it gobbles up, you could say it’s the Sasquatch of renewables.

David Gorn begins our series on Monday morning’s edition of The California Report. Here’s a page from his reporter’s journal:

My girlfriend couldn’t believe it. “You’re going WHERE? The middle of the Mojave Desert? In August?”

And she looked up the temperature out there in Kramer Junction, California. She’s so helpful that way. The web page said it would be a high of 121 degrees Fahrenheit. But the reality was much better; the area was going through a “cold snap” the week I went, and it was only 106.

Still, that’s hot enough to fry eggs on the hood of your car, and it’s hot enough to power some of the largest solar reflectors in the world. In fact, because of the dearth of cloud cover, the searing heat and the higher elevation (~2,500 feet), the Mojave is one of the best places on Earth for solar power generation.

Out at Kramer Junction, the solar power-generating plant uses solar troughs to collect the heat. There are about 10,000 of these modules, 20 mirrors to a module, spread out over a million square meters.  That’s about 1,000 acres.

The new plant that’s proposed for the Mojave city of Ivanpah, near the Nevada border, will be about three times that size. The entire thing would cover about 5 square miles.  When it’s built, it may be the largest solar power generating site in the world, depending on the pace of some other planned projects.

There are actually three other proposals for even larger solar plants in California, but those are not yet under review by the Bureau of Land Management. And one of them is out in the Imperial Valley, where there are currently no transmission lines in place.

You can peruse the major Mojave sites on our interactive map. The California Energy Commission has the complete list of existing and proposed large solar arrays.

Listen to David’s story on super-sized solar sites here.