The New York Times reports that there is mounting opposition to the large commercial solar energy installations is places such as the California Desert. The surprise is that the opposition to solar energy projects is coming from environmentalists.

Their concern is that the large solar power fields are being placed on land that is home to such animals as the Mojave ground squirrel, the desert tortoise and the burrowing owl. The idea that the desert is an empty wasteland is incorrect. Placing large energy facilities on the land is affecting local populations.
According to the United States Bureau of Land Management there have been a growing number of solar energy applications over the last 2 years. In fact, the number has grown from zero less than 2 years ago to 125 projects with a combined potential maximum capacity of 70,000 megawatts.

Part of the rush in California to build renewable energy facilities has been the California law that calls for 20 per cent of the state’s electricity to come from renewable resources by 2010. According to the California Public Utilities Commission the sate is falling behind that goal. It is estimated that a further 3,000 MW of renewable resources will have to be built or bought from somewhere.

So if solar energy can’t be harnessed through large CSP and photovoltaic facilities sitting in the desert, where will it come from? The answer could well be sitting above the heads of many of the states residents heads. Germany runs a solar power program that relies on rooftops and California could work just as effectively.

A feed-in tariff offered by the government, that is a payment for electricity generated by solar panels, would give enough incentives to make this kind of scheme possible.

While the rooftop solution would not give a stand-alone solution to meeting the 20 per cent by 2010 goal, it would certainly provide a valuable addition to other renewable energy projects. If nothing else, solar energy produced on the rooftops of California residents would ease the pressure on creating more potentially environmentally destructive projects.